Ship of the Night
by Peladon
Summary: Long after AWE Will and Elizabeth find the past is not yet done with them
1. Chapter 1

**Ship of the night **

It was fitting perhaps that he first heard the tales from Jonathon (Jon usually, but never Jack) their second son and the one that didn't seem to belong to them at all. If the truth were told he had made them both uneasy from well before his fifth birthday, for even then it had seemed that Jon belonged to the horizon, to the sea and the sky and to a world already lost.

When, on one of his rare trips home, he asked about the Black Pearl Will had been taken aback, for Jon had long passed the point of needing stories of the sea. But this time it seemed that he was the one with a story to tell, one that had stirred his memories of nursery days and prompted the question. A story he had heard in the ports around the east, of sailors stranded by a shipwreck and plucked from some God forsaken atoll by a ship of the night, a fast shadow of a ship with black timbers and black sails.

"You and mama used to tell me stories about a ship with black sails," he had said, "a ship that you sailed aboard before your marriage. Do you remember it?"  
Will had looked towards the fire, the years rolling back as he remembered that ship and with her the people and places of another life. He rarely thought of those days now, and if Elizabeth did then she never told him so. Those frantic weeks after their return from the locker had seen them at world's end in more ways than one and they had both known that there was no going back there; not when they had waited a decade for their future. But, though they had found their way through destiny's maelstrom and resumed the even tenor of normal living, their days of pirating had lived on in the stories that first Elizabeth, and then he, had told their children. Young Jon had heard the tales many times.  
"The Black Pearl," he had replied quietly.  
"That was it." Jon smiled and quirked an eyebrow at him, "The Black Pearl. Was it a real ship or just a children's story?"

Will drew a deep breath, memories crowding in,  
"Oh she was real enough, there was nothing of a child's story about the Pearl."  
"She was pirate?" the question was hesitant as if his son was aware of the indelicacy of what he was implying.  
Will had turned to look at him, so like his mother and yet so unlike, and his smile became rueful,  
"Sometimes. But ships aren't pirates, it's their crews who are that."  
Jon had nodded, he loved his ship as much as any person, though he probably wouldn't admit a difference, and would not take kindly to some one casting such a slur upon her. But there was also a frown between his eyes, as if he knew somehow that he had to step with care,  
"Could it be the same ship? After all this time? Do you know what happened to her?"

Will had leant back in his chair, his mind wandering down long neglected tracks, away from the safety of his home and and the prosperous respectability his present, back to those far off battle days of his youth, hearing the clash of steel and the roar of canon again as if it had been just yesterday. But it had been more than thirty-five years since he last left the Black Pearl to board the Dutchman, a journey that had cost him ten years of separation from Elizabeth and his first-born child. Only once in those ten years as the Dutchman's captain had he seen anyone from the black ship, and that Barbossa's pet lost overboard in a skirmish somewhere off the coast of India. What she was doing there he hadn't discovered, for though the monkey had known him and clung to his shoulder on the journey to the next world it could tell him nothing. The Pearl had sailed away from the battle, apparently undamaged, and so he hadn't known where she was bound or who stood at her helm.

In the years since the sky had flashed green and he had been returned to the living he had seen or heard nothing of her, nor the men he had sailed with. 'God forgive me' he thought, 'I fought with them, certainly owe my life to one of them, and yet I haven't remembered them in nearly thirty years' He wondered if Elizabeth had. Catching Jon's enquiring look he sighed,  
"The Pearl was a good ship, and fast," he said, "but in the nature of things it is unlikely that she's still sailing. She's almost certainly gone to the depths." He had reached for the decanter, "probably taking her captain with her."  
'Again. Whichever one it was who prevailed,' he added silently.

Jon had nodded,  
"But it's strange all the same. How many black ships are there? Black canvas is not that easily come by and why would anyone take so much trouble?"  
Will just shook his head, that there should be another black sailed ship seemed unlikely. The Pearl had been the creation of man as uncommon as he was unreliable and though Barbossa had captained her for ten years no one else had ever doubted that it was Jack she really belonged to, that it was in Jack's sometimes' wayward mind that she had found her birth. It was his reckless trade with Davy Jones that raised her when she had been lost. Who other than Jack would resurrect her again?

And Jack must be long gone.

That thought brought an unexpected pang of grief, but whether it was for the man or the youth he represented Will couldn't say.  
"I don't know," he sipped his drink, "but it's unlikely that it is the Pearl."  
Will frowned as he thought of Elizabeth, long since reconciled to a more sedate life yet still haunted by the manner of her father's death and the nightmare of the lives, at least one life, that she had taken, or cost, in her fury and desperation. He had hoped they had left that time behind them forever, but the shadows in her face these past months had stirred a fear in him that she was remembering them again, and more than was healthy for her. He was afraid that the pains and grief and guilt of that time had returned from the past to haunt her present. He shot his son a careful look,  
"But best not to mention it to your mother, it was a long time ago and those memories are better not recalled. She has enough to concern her in your sister's wedding."

He had managed an easy enough tone but Jon's eye had widened at the warning, realising that he was skimming reef strewn waters that his childhood self had never realised were waiting. But he had seen the brittle look in his mother's face this visit and, though he looked uncertain, he had nodded his agreement.

Nothing more was said about the ship of the night.

***

Yet Will could not forget what Jon had told him and nor could he forget the Pearl. Her ghost had stirred and she wouldn't let him be. At night she sailed into his dreams, and always with Jack at the helm, his hat spotted with spray and his hair whipped by the wind. Jack Sparrow, no older than the day he had last seen him. That last fateful day when the pirate had grasped his hand and guided it towards the heart of Davy Jones, clasped his dying fingers around a broken sword and given him and Elizabeth a second chance. When he had given an unspoken promise that he would do nothing to come between them.

Nor had he, though Jack had shared it all and so might have been the one man to sway Elizabeth from her pledge to her husband during those long and lonely years; the man who might have condemned him to eternity aboard the Dutchman just as Jones had been condemned. But Jack had honoured that unmentioned promise and left them to their shared destiny. From the day he had left her waiting for her husband on a far off beach Elizabeth had neither seen nor heard from Jack, of that much Will was certain. Maybe it would have been better if she had.

Nor had Jack's father. Teague had died while Will had still served the Dutchman, and he had passed on knowing only that Jack had sailed away on the Pearl.

But they had all known that Jack Sparrow was not a man born to grow old. Whether it was at sea or in the back alleys of some far flung port Jack would meet death before age withered him. Teague had always known it and Will had come to know it too in the long years spent collecting souls, come to know that some men are not destined to outlive the vigour of youth. No, however much Jack feared the locker he was not born to follow his father into venerable and respected old age as his world emptied. Jack was gone, just as Teague was and Barbossa must be. There was no one left to be sailing the Pearl.

He had looked for other stories of the black ship anyway. In the taverns and chandlers and coffee shops he had sought them, from sailors returning from the furthest reaches of the shrinking globe, from merchants and mapmakers and officers of the Royal Navy. Never really sure if he was hoping to find other tales of Jon's ship of the night, or to find that there were none.

Still she and her captains would not leave him alone. At night he would sit by the fire, Elizabeth silent at his side, and remember. Barbossa as first met, a monkey on his shoulder and an apple in his hand. Elizabeth on a plank over a deep blue ocean, an island disappearing into the distance, the pictures in his mind of her alone on a beach with a pirate with dark shadowed eyes and a charming, yet secret, smile. A pirate she had killed then searched for on the other side of death. A man whose memory was too uncomfortable for both of them, despite all the years that had passed, to be tolerated in large quantity.

Why it was that Jack should return to haunt him now he couldn't know, only that he did. Yet there might have a purpose to it, Will had seen enough of destiny to know that nothing could be taken for granted in the fates of those who had sailed to Calypso's bidding.

So the other stories came as little surprise, and he found them easily enough once he started to seek them. Stories from other lands told in other languages, but always the same description, always the ship of the night, the black ship with black sails. He listened and doubted and wondered but was never truly convinced.

Until he met the boy.


	2. Chapter 2

**Ship of the night 2**

He heard of the boy though a childhood friend of Jon; Edward was the third son of a good, though not overly wealthy, family and trying to make a future for himself in the navy. Learning of Will's interest in the black ship at a card evening in their soon to be son in law's honour, 'one of far too many such events' Will thought as he saw the strain around Elizabeth's eyes and the fatigue not quite hidden from him by her careful dressing, Edward had offered an introduction to someone who had seen it at close quarters. Will's concern for Elizabeth had pushed away any hesitation he might otherwise have felt in accepting the offer.

They met at the inn, the offer of dinner accepted with pleasure, though Edward had excused himself from the appointment with claims of family duty. Will wondered if he thought the tales this lad had to tell were nothing more than that, just tales. Some part of him hoped that they were, or that they were the product of a fertile imagination built on sailor's wild stories during a long and arduous voyage. But his first sight of his guest made him doubt that.

For some reason the boy reminded him of Norrington, another of those long forgotten pawns in a game whose rules they hadn't known. It was there in the stiffness of his back, the squared shoulders and the deep water eyes. Yet he was truly little more than a boy, some years short of Jon's age. For the first time Will realised how young Norrington must have been when they first met. But maybe it was that likeness that made him so careful of the boy's dignity and so willing to hear what he had to say.

"So you saw the black sailed ship yourself?" he said as the first course was placed in on the table.  
The boy nodded, his eyes wandering over the table with greedy joy, he was still of an age to be always hungry. But he had good manners and sat back with feigned patience while Will carved the bird, obviously willing to tell all manner of tales to please the provider of such largesse. Yet, as he took his first gulp of wine and began his story, any doubts that Will might have had about its veracity faded away; for, though the boy told his tale coherently enough, he could not hide the fear it could still stir in him.

"We had been escort to a small merchant fleet on its way to the Americas, when we sailed into strange weather," he said cramming another roasted potato into his mouth and swallowing it almost at a gulp, "The air was suddenly cold, and an odd mist came up from nowhere." He shot Will a haughty look before he could say anything, "I've seen sudden mists before but nothing like this one sir, 'twas like it was alive the way it came curling round the masts and twining round your throat like it wanted to choke you."  
He seemed to suppress a shudder, and swallowed another stuffed mouthful as if to deny the thought,  
" We midshipman just did as we were told, and for the rest we tried to stay out of the way for we had little knowledge of what to do; even the Captain said he'd never seen the like before. Many of the crew were afraid, and those who seen such things in the past were more than afraid they seemed to be terrified. Everywhere there were men praying and crossing themselves, and not all of them praying to God either. There was more than one plea sent to Calypso that day."  
He searched Will's face fearfully as he spoke, as if seeking a sign of anger for such impious actions.

Will suppressed a smile, remembering some things he had seen when he was not so very much older,  
"Understandable enough when at the mercy of the waves," was all he said.  
The boy nodded in relieved agreement,  
"Yet it was hard to tell why they were so afeared," he mused, "the seas were calm enough, and though the winds were light it was no doldrums. But afterwards the helmsman told me that the compass was spinning like north had been wiped from the world and now it didn't know what to do. Then the mist got heavier, so heavy that we could not see the sky nor judge the position of the sun, all we could see was the water in front and behind us. It was like we were in the eye of a storm and the clouds were hunting us, only hanging back until we were too weak to fight before they pounced."

"For how long did you sail in that way?"  
The boy shrugged and took another gulp of wine,  
"We didn't know, for the chronometers became as unreliable as the compass. It may have been a few hours it may have been more or less. But the longer we sailed the more eerie it became, it was as if we had left the world behind and were sailing in some long dark tunnel made of mists."  
He frowned,  
"The very air we breathed became strange, as if it had a life of its own. The hairs on your head seemed to writhe and your skin prickled as if in a freezing spray, yet the sea was flat calm. But the sails swelled as though the wind was full astern."  
He stared unseeing at the fork half way to his mouth as if frozen by the memory.

"And the black ship?" Will prompted.  
The boy jumped as his mind returned to the present day and his meal. He swallowed the forkful before looked across at Will, his eyes still darkened by memory,  
"We heard the bell first, coming out the mists like the call of some strange bird. But we didn't know if was a ship or some warning of rocks or reefs ahead. The captain was worried we would hit whatever it was and set look outs on both rails as well as prow and stern, and yet they swore that they didn't see her until she was almost on us. One moment there was just dark and mists and then there she was there on our port bow."  
"A ship of the night." Will breathed almost to himself.  
The boy looked at him wide eyed,  
"You've heard it from others then?" he said, his tone almost disappointed.  
Will nodded, then smiled  
"Yes, but go on anyway, so far they have only been vague stories. I've not spoken to anyone else who has seen her at first hand."  
The boy brightened at that and straightened his back as if proud to be the one who had,  
"A ship of the night," he agreed, " a shadow in the mists at first, then as she came closer we could see that it was a black ship, dark timbers, charred looking, and with black sails."  
"Her figure head?" Will could hardly bear to ask the question.  
The boy frowned as if wondering why that should matter,  
"An angel with a dove. Nicely carved the first mate said."  
Will let out his breath in a long sigh,  
"I see."  
He fell silent.

The boy sat quietly, eating and watching him as if aware that something more than the desire to hear a strange story was behind Will's interest.  
"Did you know her sir?" he asked eventually.  
Will nodded, his eyes locked on the far wall, his mind in the past,  
"Perhaps," he said eventually, "a long time ago. I didn't think she could still be sailing."  
Opposite him the boy stared wide eyed, a new respect creeping into his face as he realised that this prosperous looking man might once have been a sailor, a man who sought adventure on the seas, not just some careful and land bound merchant. Maybe it was that recognition that made him continue with quiet certainty,  
"She wasn't a new ship sir, not small but nor was she particularly large. But she was a pretty ship, and a sight for sore eyes at that moment."

Will smiled,  
"I expect that she was."  
He applied himself to his food for a moment or two, his thoughts lost in possibilities, The boy did the same with gusto, but his eyes kept flicking back to Will as if he was unsure whether to say more or not. Finally Will had laid his fork down and sat back a little,  
"What happened then? Did you see any of her crew?"  
His companion smiled and waved his glass at Will, the relief he had felt then showing in his face.  
"Aye sir, she was no ghost ship. Though it's true that more than one of the younger crew thought that she might be when she appeared." He took another gulp of his wine, "there were men aboard her, some on deck and some trimming the sheets as she came alongside of us."  
"How close did she come?"  
That earned a respectful look,  
"We thought she meant to engage us too, for she had the look and feel of a pirate, or so it seemed to me, and we were all but helpless in the fogs. But she kept her distance and her gun ports closed, she just signalled us to follow her."  
"And did you?"  
The lad shrugged,  
"Not at first. Though he wouldn't admit it I think that the captain had her marked as a pirate too, though she hadn't hoisted colours, for he hung back and sent the gunners to their stations."  
The young eyes stared across the room for moment all thought of food and drink forgotten,  
"It seemed like an eternity that we huddled there caught in those unearthly fogs while that black ship waited patiently. Then suddenly she moved, started to broadside, but she kept the ports closed and the 'follow me' flags flying. I thought our captain would give the order to open fire but he held off, it was clear that the black ships' helmsman knew those waters and to many of us she seemed to be our only hope of making safety. Eventually, when she was just a grappling line's distance off our port side, a man came down from the wheel to the rail and shouted to the captain, told him not to be a fool, that we had nothing he wanted and that we should follow him and he'd lead us out."

Will sat silently watching the young man on the other side of the table chewing at his lip, seeing the fear etched in a face that should have been too young to know it, but stiffened with a stubborn determination that no one should know the depth of his terror. He was reminded again of Norrington, that morning when Elizabeth was first gone from Port Royale, trying to be the navy man while every pore had oozed fear for her and a knowledge of his own impotence in the face of the Pearls' disappearance. More than thirty years later Will could recognise it and feel sympathy for the long dead man, both for that day and the fact that it had been the despised Sparrow who had accomplished what James Norrington had not been able to do. A wound that had no doubt festered in his soul, a sore that had maybe taken him into a hurricane and set his feet on the path of destruction.

Will had ferried the late Admiral to the other side, but he had been one of many in those dark first days and Norrington had used the press of souls to avoid conversation. His only words to Will had been an imperious demand to know that Elizabeth was safe, then the half afraid questions about her father, the answers sending him to hours of solitary, stony faced grief at the Dutchman's stern. Then, finally, an equally imperious to demand that Will return to her as soon as possible and see that the rest of her life was spent in a manner befitting a lady of her quality. Will, remembering her encounter with Jones on that same deck, and a day on a far off sandy shore, would have smiled at that sentiment, but the pain in the other man's eyes had killed any amusement before it was born.

But that had been a long time ago. With a silent sigh he pulled himself back to the present and the lad's story.

"And then?" he prompted.  
The young sailor gave a small start and pulled himself out of his own reverie,  
"Our captain asked why we should trust him. He seemed to find that amusing, just laughed and said no reason at all, then he looked around him at the mists and asked the captain which alternative it was that he preferred."  
The thin, stiff shoulders rose and fell in a shrug,  
"We all knew the situation we found ourselves in was not a happy one. The mists had come from nowhere and we didn't know how far they stretched or what was hidden in their depths. We could sail on, risk the reefs and rocks that might lie in wait for us, and hope we found the other side with the keel intact, but without compass or sight of the sky to give us a bearing we might sail in circles forever. It was risk that or risk following this strange ship and put ourselves at the mercy of her stranger master."  
He looked across a Will an uncertain expression on his face,  
" For he was strange sir, the captain of that other ship, I've never seen anyone quite like him." He shrugged again and pushed away his now empty plate, "But we knew that he was right. We had no choice, either we followed him or we stayed where we were knowing that our chances of survival were small and getting smaller."

Will smiled and indicated that the waitress should bring the next course,  
"So you followed?"  
The boy's eyes took on a brighter sparkle as realised more food was to be forthcoming and leant back in his chair, now completely at ease,  
"Aye sir. Though we struggled a little to keep up with her. The winds were light and she seemed to make better use of them than we did. Several of the officers muttered at the speed of her, that and the number of canon she seemed to carry, it made them all the more wary of her intentions."  
"But she gave you no cause to fear her?"  
He watched his companion closely as he shook his head,  
"No sir, she kept well within sight and those flags flying."  
His eyes were still locked on the maids' hands as she loaded the table with the second course, picking up his spoon with obvious glee as a crisp fruit pie was placed in the centre of the table, and beside it a steaming plum duff and a jug of cream.  
"It seemed for an age that we followed her sir. With the winds so light and the sea dark it was an eerie thing to be doing, and more than one of the crew protested that she was a devil ship and that she would lead us to our ruin. But it seemed that she knew where she was going, for she never hesitated nor broke from the line. Nor did she lead us onto rocks, or to the haunts of the mermaids and sirens as some of the sailors swore she would," He began loading his plate again. "And our captain's faith was repaid sir, in the end."

"She led you out safely then?"  
The boy nodded his hands still busy with food  
"Eventually we sailed into the daylight and warmer waters again. She was still in front of us, dancing across the waves like a child suddenly let out to play, and we continued to follow her putting space between us and those loathsome mists." He smiled and took a drink before starting on his pie, "She was a sight to see as we escaped the mists sir, enough to rouse the heart of any seaman if the truth be told, with her black sails stark in the sunlight. She was fast too, fast as the devil. Then as we came in sight of our merchants she turned, crossing alongside us so close that we could see her captain bow, a strange foreign looking gesture thought his words and voice had been English enough. The he swept his hat to us as if wishing us good luck and the black ship pulled past us and headed back from where we had come."  
Will felt his chest and throat tighten, now it came to it he wasn't sure that he wanted to ask the question, the one he had really come here to ask,  
"This man, the one you called her captain, what was he like?"

The boy seemed to think about it for a moment, occupying the time with chewing and loading his spoon with pie; finally he smiled rather shyly,  
"Like a pirate sir, a pirate from a book."  
Will had looked down at his plate, reaching for the cream jug while he steadied his voice to careful unconcern,  
"Any particular pirate?"  
The smiled peeped out again, still shy and uncertain,  
"Well sir, I saw a book once, when I was a child, with stories about a pirate and there was a sketch in that. But I'd never seen a pirate who actually looked like that, nor anyone else, not anywhere, not until I saw the man on the deck of the black ship."  
"And what did he look like, this pirate?"  
" Tanned sir, and dark haired, and he wore a full skirted coat, long topped sea boots and a tricorn hat. And a scarf, a red scarf that hung down his back."  
"Anything else you remember?"  
"I didn't see his face sir, not close, but he had long hair. Very long sir, and thick, not powdered or a wig, not like a navy man. He had things bound in it, trinkets of some sort sir, they sparkled in the sun when he waved us farewell."

Will stared at the food on his plate the image in his mid flaring into life again as if he had seen it only yesterday,  
"Beads" he muttered almost to himself, "and charms and a silver coin."  
"Perhaps," the boy replied, "we weren't close enough to see."  
He squinted at Will,  
"Do you think you know him sir?"  
The polite but uncertain tone made Will smile,  
"I shouldn't think so. It's been a long time since I was at sea. Was he young this pirate looking man?"  
He saw the boy frown and hid a smile, what would seem young or old to this child? Did he know the difference between thirty and sixty? Or would anyone more than twenty seem ancient to him?"  
"I'm not sure that I could say sir. We never came so close that I could judge. But from his manner and the way he moved I would have said he might be of an age with the captain and maybe a little younger,"

Will considered that. So what would that make him this strange captain of a dead ship? Late twenties or early thirties at most. Not Jack then, but maybe Jack's son. A strange thought that one after all these years, that somewhere on the seas the Black Pearl still sailed, captained by the son of Jack Sparrow. Yet maybe it wasn't so odd, given Jack's nature there was almost certainly going to be a son of his somewhere in the world, why not on the Black Pearl?

Anyways, son or not, he might be someone who would know where Jack was; and if, by some miracle, he still lived. Someone who might help put the matter finally to rest and allow Elizabeth to settle down into a harmless, comfortable, and more importantly, a peaceful, old age.


	3. Chapter 3

**Ship of the night 3**

A cool and hesitant spring became a golden and hot blooded summer and the frantic preparations for their youngest daughter's wedding absorbed most of Elizabeth's time. In the long, slow, darkening of the days, almost reminiscent of Caribbean evenings, they would sit in the garden and talk lazily of guests, of food and wine and presents; as he watched her smile over some plan or other Will noticed, with both pleasure and sadness, that she was almost the girl he had first known again, all traces of the vengeful pirate gone.

Yet Will knew that appearances could be deceptive, just as he had long ago admitted that those days would always remain with them. While he had served the Dutchman there had been some time to resolve things and prepare himself, but Elizabeth had not been granted as much grace. Now, with her last child about to leave childhood behind, the ties to the motherhood that had grounded her in the present were weakening and the past seemed to making another move to claim her. Sometimes she would fall quiet and he would see the distance in her eyes and know that she was not here but there, back in the days when life held so much promise and she knew too little, either of life or of people, to be afraid. It had been such a small portion of their lives, those days on the Pearl, and yet it had marked them as irrevocably as the brand on Jack's wrist.

Jack again. It seemed to Will that he was never far away now. While his days on Dutchman had faded to pale water coloured snatches of memory the man who he'd not thought about at all in those years, and since, had returned to his mind in oils. As he sat and watched Elizabeth's gently silvered head bent over her book he wondered how he had ever forgotten.

Only the other morning, as he had inspected a cargo at the quay, he had heard a parrot squawk and immediately he had been back in the past, standing behind Jack as he studied a chart, with Cotton at the helm and Gibbs half asleep on a pile of canvas. It was as if the stories of the black ship had opened a door in time, and as he strode around the docks checking his purchases, a part of his mind was on constant alert, as if he was expecting to round a corner and see Jack walking ahead of him.

There were more stories of the black ship now, so many that it unnerved him. Since he had dined with the boy the news of his interest in the ship of the night had spread, and, much to his surprise, he found other people willing to talk of it. Most surprising of all was the length of the history he was slowly uncovering, for it was soon apparent that the black ship had been around for more years than Jon had understood when he first asked of it. What also became clear as his list of sightings grew was that it wasn't only in the Caribbean that it was seen, but that wherever it appeared its' presence was foreshadowed by strange weather and mists.

In some way that made Will uneasy, though he never spoke if it a shadow of his time beyond mortality still walked with him, and he knew himself to be more keenly aware than most of the closeness of other worlds to the one he lived in. Aware, too, of the fine web of strangeness that connected his world of the present to other things. Each time he heard the stories of the black ship he felt a small tug on that web as if something beyond the sweat and toil of the workaday world was being stirred. Maybe it was that feeling that persuaded him to start writing the stories down.

***

Emily's wedding was a fine event, with friends and family clustered around, and the joy and satisfaction of seeing a beloved daughter glowing and proud with a man of her choice. Elizabeth seemed to push away her fatigue, her eyes brightening and the lines of weariness fading from her fine skin, the inner fire that once been so much a part of her returning in the light of her daughters joy. Will felt his throat tighten as he watched her exchange a reassuring smile with Emily as she made one last adjustment of the folds of her dress, the silk of it so like the dress she herself had worn that disastrous far away day.

Time seemed to roll backwards as they stood in the dusty light of the church, and Will could pretend that they were in Port Royale, waiting for the wedding they never had. He could imagine himself back to those moments when he thought he would stand in such a place waiting to hear the swish of silken skirts as her father led her up the aisle. When she reached out and took his hand as Emily and Robert exchanged their vows, so different to ones her parents had spoken, it was not a wife of thirty five years seeking comfort from her husband, but a girl grasping her lovers hand in joy as they prepared to start a new life.

Will swallowed on unexpected tears and closed his fingers around hers, then he looked across at her, seeing the shine in her eyes and knowing that she, like he, was repeating the vows that Beckett had stolen from them a lifetime ago. He knew then that she was pledging herself to him again in whatever life still held for them, and was taken aback by the depth of relief that brought. He had not realised that he feared he was losing her.

It proved to be a day of surprises too, first the whispered announcement of their eldest daughter in law that the next generation was started upon, then the unexpected arrival of their third son from London, and finally, as the day turned into evening, the letter.

Daniel had brought it with him having heard from Jon of their father's interests in strange ships off the islands of the Caribbean,  
"I mentioned it to someone I know, he is home on leave from the Caribbean having been ill with a fever this past two years. I hope you do not mind father, I broached the subject only thinking to distract him from his aches, but no sooner had I told him then he insisted that he must write to you." He held out the letter, a thick packet that hinted at many sheets of paper.  
Will had smiled at him and shook his head,  
"I make no secret of my interest. Jon's story piqued my curiosity. What I have heard since has intrigued me and I would be glad to know of an answer to the riddle."  
He looked into the candlelight and frowned,  
"It sounds so much like the Pearl and yet I know that it can't be."  
He looked back to his son,  
"Any further information is welcome." He gave a small smile, "I have decided to write the stories down, a legacy for future generations of Turner's to amuse their children with."

Daniel smiled,  
"I think we all know them well enough father! As I recall we could none of us ever get enough of them. I remember being with you at the quay side, all of six years old, and slithering around between the crates pretending I was Jack Sparrow escaping from the East India company."  
His smile widened as he saw his sister approach,  
"The girls always fought over who was going to be mamma, and Jon would never let anyone else be Jack, he said his name meant he had the right, so I could only be him when I was alone."  
"Jack Sparrow!" Emily's voice was alive with laughter, "The stuff of all my girlish fantasy, and Caroline's too if the true be told. I dreamt about him for years."  
Her husband smiled at her,  
"Should I be jealous?"  
She tightened her hand around his arm, and laughed as she shook her head,  
"No Rob, I was just a girl then, and I doubt that any one ever like him really walked the earth. For all that my parents insist that he did. But it's true that he was everything romantic that a young girl could imagine."  
"As I was not?" teased Will,  
"How could you be when you were my father?" she teased in return.

Daniel smiled fondly at his sister and then winked at her husband,  
"You'd not see Rob with his hair to his waist then? Or with beads and trinkets around his face and a braided beard?"  
"Or a sash three feet long at my belt." Robert looked towards Will, "Oh I've heard the stories too sir. Daniel and I scrapped more than once in our younger years over whether his parents had really known a famed pirate."  
He stepped a little closer and dropped his voice to a confiding tone,  
"Now that I'm family maybe you will tell me the truth of it." His voice became wistful, "for we have nothing half so exciting in my family, and it's so long ago now that it cannot matter. Did you truly sail with Captain Sparrow sir? Aboard the Black Pearl?"

Will smiled slightly and looked at the floor,  
'It's strange what time and distance will do,' he thought, 'when did Jack Sparrow the pirate become Captain Sparrow the legend? When had the man that Norrington would hang without further trial become the figure that put such awe into the voices of respectable young men?'  
He looked across at Elizabeth deep in matronly conversations with Rob's mother and remembered another young girl, 'though it seems that he had always been the stuff of maidenly dreams', he thought with a rueful mental smile, ' thank whatever gods look over us that he was the man he was and not the man he could have been.'

He turned his attention back to his son in law waiting patiently for an answer. The stories of Beckett had never made it home to England, at least not to places where Rob and his friends would ever see them, and, though Jack's deeds had been reported widely enough in the days before they met, he had slipped out of sight after that one last legend building deed during which he took the Pearl back from Barbossa for the final time. Though the occasional newspaper still made comparisons to him whenever a privateer took a prize. 'What;' he wondered, 'would Jack have made of that.'

"Oh, Jack was real enough, " he spoke aloud. "Though even when you knew him it was hard to separate the true from the fantasy. Now it's impossible."  
He looked around at the bright young faces realising how little they suspected, and how little they could ever know.  
"But it's true that he saved Elizabeth from drowning, and later from an even grimmer fate. Without him I would never have found her, much less saved her. He was a thief and a pirate, and he claimed to be nothing else, but for all that he was a good man in many ways, and I've never heard of him harming an innocent, or anyone else who wasn't trying to harm him first."  
Will remembered the shock he had felt when he realised that of all the souls sent to eternity in those last months he himself had despatched far more of them there than ever Jack had. It had taken him a long time to come to terms with that knowledge, and the fear of Elizabeth realising the same had added extra mental torment to his loss and grief in that first year on the Dutchman. He smiled at Emily and her husband,  
"He could be all pirate when necessary, he was a fine shot and he knew how to handle a sword when needed, but he was a clever man too and if he could achieve what he wanted without a fight then he would do it."

"And what did he want?" Rob asked obviously pleased to allowed to join in the family mythology.  
Will's eyes drifted away to an inward vision of the past,  
"Not so much, and then again maybe everything. The Pearl, the seas and freedom," his voice was quiet, and then he gave a short crack of laughter, "and enough gold for all the rum he wanted and to entertain some pleasurable company when the chance arose."  
He cast his daughter a saucy look,  
"He might have been a young maiden's fancy, but they were as safe with him as with any honourable man. His tastes did not run to innocence and he knew the world well enough not to do casual harm to those who did not understand the price of what they might seem to offer." He looked back towards Elizabeth, "for which I and others had good reason to be thankful."

"He sounds more like a knight than a pirate." Rob smiled.  
Will shook his head,  
"No, he was pirate true enough, though maybe not enough for other people's tastes. Jack was a conundrum, or then again maybe he wasn't. Maybe he was just a pirate with a good heart."  
He remembered his father leaving the Dutchman to rejoin the wife he had deserted all those years ago, and Norrington hanging back in silence rather than face those he felt he had shamed, "but maybe that wasn't quite unique. After all the world doesn't always treat people fairly, and those who find themselves where they never expected to be do not necessarily lose all that was good about them before."  
He saw the questions clustering on their tongues, it seemed that Jack's spell was not yet spent. but he knew now was not the time,  
"But those are stories for dark evenings round a good fire with my grandchildren at my knee."  
He indicated the letter that Daniel had laid upon the table and smiled widely,  
"Maybe I'll have another one to add to the list when I've read this."  
They all laughed and turned their thoughts to other topics, but Will felt the tugging of that unseen web again, as if something was being set in motion, and wondered at it.

Yet he could never have guessed the full truth of what his strange sense was telling him.


	4. Chapter 4

Elizabeth had been deep in discussion with her daughter's new mother in law when she saw Daniel hand the letter to his father, and wondered what could be so important on this of all days. Today was a day of family and it seemed unlikely that Daniel would have allowed business to intrude; which suggested that the letter was from a friend, and yet she couldn't think of who it might be.

They knew no one in London any longer, the friends of her father were all long gone, as was that generation of her own family. Bristol, Exeter and Truro were the towns they were known in now, for she and Will had thought long and hard about where to settle, and they had decided that London was too great a risk. Cutler Beckett may have acted in his own interests and without his kings authority, but that did not mean that being seen around the town by the Lords of the Admiralty, or agents of the crown, was politic. No one had come looking for them in all these years, and it was now too long ago to matter, but, until Daniel had made his home there, they had no links with London.

Elizabeth watched over Emma's shoulder as Will put the letter inside his coat, saw the amused look on Daniel's face and decided that some way or somehow it had to be related to the stories that Will was collecting. Her heart sank, in some undefined way she had hoped that the matter might be dropped once Emily was married and she and Will could spend more time together, hoped that the past would quietly fade away again and the nightmares and that the grief and guilt would stop.

But it seemed that Will's interest was caught and there would be more stories and more memories. She wasn't sure that she could bear it.

Not that he had told her about them, though there had been times when she had thought that maybe he meant to. On several occasions it seemed that he started the sentence, then thought better of it; and, though she had known it was better to wait until he did so, she still felt the desire to corner him in his den and wave the growing stack of paper under his nose and ask him what he was hiding from her. More importantly ask him why he was hiding it from her when they had sworn never to make such mistakes again.

Though, if she were honest she had to admit he might have good reason not to tell her. Looking at herself in their bedroom glass only yesterday morning she had seen the face that he saw and had been shocked, she had not realised that she had become so drawn and pale. Emily's wedding, and the round of visits and parties that had brought, had tired her more than she expected. She had hurried to hide the damage and prayed that it was only fatigue and that, when the wedding was over and she had chance to rest, the bloom would return to her cheeks

Yet in her heart of hearts she knew that it was not only the pressures of the wedding draining her. The conflicting feelings that the imminent loss of her last child to womanhood has stirred were as much to blame, for, as she prepared for this wedding, it was impossible not but think of the one that she had never had. With that came the memories of the events of that time, and of her father, lost while she still needed him so very badly. With no remaining children to demand her interest the memories had taken hold, stirring the guilt that had never really left her, and awakening a longing for the warm sun of her girlhood.

Now, with the wedding over, and Emily soon to depart for her new home, Elizabeth dreaded the silence of the house and the long hours alone. The fact that Will was keeping secrets from her, that he felt the need to do so, somehow made it all so much more miserable. They had agreed to leave the past behind them that first day of his return; with so much time already lost to them every moment was precious, too precious to waste it on discussions of what had been and what might have been. Maybe that was why he hadn't told her about the stories and kept his interests in the ship of the night to himself. But they had also promised that there would be no secrets between them, and there never had been, until now.

Now there were two secrets again, two burdens to be borne, just as there had been then; for as Will would not share the stories with her nor could she tell him that she already knew about them.

She hadn't meant to go looking for them of course, she would never dream of raiding Will's desk, for she trusted him no less than she ever had done. No, her discovery had been quite innocent; she had needed more writing paper and it had been late, too near to dinner to send someone to fetch it for her, so she had gone to borrow some. The stack of papers had been the first thing she had laid her hands upon.

Even so she would not have looked further, just taken her note paper and left the room, if the pile had not slid sideways, and if, in her efforts to stop them falling to the floor, she had not seen a single name scrawled on the top of one of them; a name that had first rooted her to the spot in shock, and then sent her stumbling to a chair. Jack Sparrow, Will had scrawled the name of Jack Sparrow on the top of one of the upper sheets and then a single word, son, and a question mark. Seeing that she could no more put them aside unread than she could fly. It was as if fate had reached out and placed a heavy hand upon her shoulder once again.

Yet she could not have said what it was that she hoped, or feared, to find. But day after day she had returned to Will's study and to the stack of stories he had collected, hating herself for waiting until he was engaged in business before she did so, hating too the secrecy with which she carried them to her dressing room to read. Dreading what she might find there, what it was that he felt the need to hide so carefully.

Yet that scrawling of Jack's name explained it all perhaps.

Will knew that the memory of Jack that still tortured her, even more than her bitter sweet recollections of James, and knew too that the pain of it had grown greater with the passing years. For though James had died for her it had been his choice, his sacrifice, whereas she had killed Jack and in the manner most terrible to the man she knew him to be. That she had done it in fear and ignorance had long ago ceased to seem any defence.

When she had faced Davy Jones on the Dutchman's deck in the midst of the battle she had first begun to understand what she had done to Jack in those moments before she sent him to the Kracken and the locker. As she had drawn her sword to face her enemy she had seen the shape of the sin she had committed in sending one such as Jack to his death as a helpless victim, no longer free and no longer master of his fate. The memory of that action had eaten at her mind and soul in the years since. The irony was that she had done it to save Will and yet it was their son, the son who would never have been born but for that act, who had poured the salt into the wound; that and her love of her other children.

She had been a girl then, a pampered, selfish and greedy child, but time and life changed that, and, as those sons and daughters had grown, the woman she became had discovered the full measure of the load the girl she had been had cast upon Jack. From the first time her eldest son smiled shyly at some tiny girl's attentions she had prayed that her boys never met an Elizabeth Swann. As they grew she had prayed harder still that if they did that they would be granted the grace to behave as Jack and Will had done. But loving them as she did, and knowing the horrors that life could hold for even the strongest, her most fervent prayer for all of them was that if, when, they faced death it would be on their own terms.

That was what she had denied Jack, and it was that which she could neither forget, nor forgive herself.

As she watched Will smile at Daniel and tuck the papers into his jacket, as Emily inclined her head against her new husband's arm and laughed at her father with an indulgent smile and laughing eyes, Elizabeth came to a decision.

***

"Will, I want to return to Port Royale."

Will raised his eyes to hers in shock,

"Why? It's been a long time Elizabeth, there is nothing there for us any longer. We sold all your property in the islands before Caroline was born; you know that we did. What is there to go back for?"

"I had happy times there, and so did you. There were more of them than the bad times and we never had the chance to go back and remember them. It seems wrong somehow that Beckett should have deprived us of those too."

She leant across the table and put her hand upon his arm,

"I want to remember my father Will, I want to walk the walls where I told James that I loved you and where he wished us well. I want to see the places where you taught me to use a sword again," a sly smile curved her mouth, "remember those days Will?"

He turned his hand over and grasped her fingers, smiling into her eyes as he did so,

"Very well indeed. But we don't need to go there to remember them Elizabeth."

She smiled back at him, a trace of that girl visible in her pale face again,

"I know. But with the children gone, I would like to go back and see the places where I was young again. Can we do that?"

Will looked at her and kept the smile in place but he felt concern gnawing at him. Was it just that? That the children were gone? He had noticed how quiet Elizabeth had been in the weeks since Emily had left for her own house, and it was true that their home seemed a strange place, empty and silent. Evenings were peaceful but oddly unsatisfactory now, Elizabeth sewing or reading while he told her of the day's business or answered letters in his study. Or wrote his stories of the ship of the night.

He felt a tug of guilt that he still hadn't shared those with her, each evening he promised himself he would but she wasn't sleeping well and he was worried about disturbing memories that were better left alone. Was that why he felt a reluctance to travel back to the Caribbean? After all there was no reason why they shouldn't go. There was business that he could arrange to take him there if he needed a reason, and William could more than manage things here; in fact he might welcome a chance to have a free hand without his father at his back. One day he would have to take over, maybe now was a good time to let him find his feet as master.

Yet still he felt reluctance. When he looked at Elizabeth he thought he saw the shadow of the past in her face and he was more concerned than he wanted to admit to himself about the consequences of revisiting it at such close quarters. But maybe it would not be laid to rest until they did, Elizabeth had never had a chance to say goodbye to her father and perhaps that's what she needed, perhaps she needed to go back to her childhood haunts to do that. If that were the case then how could he deny it to her?

"Are you sure that is what you want?" he asked gently, searching her face for some clue as to why she made this request.

"Yes, I'm sure. Will I want to feel the Caribbean sun on my back again, to walk the streets where we first learned to know each other, to revisit the places where talked and planned and dreamed. I want to remember it as it was then Will, not as Becket made it."

"Those place might be gone. They may not be there to see."

"I know. But I will be able to remember them, even seeing them changed." Her smile faded, "now all I remember are the hangings and the fear and the cries of those waiting to die. When I remember my father it is as I last saw him alive, desperately trying to get me away from the horror of it all and failing."

She looked at him with sad and weary eyes,

"I know that I need to let the past go Will, I thought that I had but it seems that I was mistaken. I tell myself that it was a long time ago but since Emily left it all seems to have come back and I can't let it go, not when all I remember is that. Do you see?"

Will gave a sad smile and nodded,

"I think so. I got the chance to make peace with my father, it has never really occurred to me that you did not."

He drew a deep breath and took her hand,

"It will take time to arrange, but I'll make enquires."

***

Elizabeth had never quite worked out how she felt about the sea. As girl it had spoken to her of adventure and romance and of people different to the calm and sober friends of her parents. As young woman it had taken over her life and carried her to places she had never dreamed of with people she had never thought to see. She had sailed it, fought it and, but for Jack, would have lost her life to it, yet still she didn't know what she felt about it.

For her the ocean was always bound up with her feelings for Will, it had given him to her and for that she loved it, but it had also taken him away for ten long years and that she had never forgiven. For her children the sea meant travel and adventure, and for Jon it was a deep and enduring love, but for her it would always be bound up with her memories of those three eventful years that had taken so much from her. Though she had lived by it, and with the smell of it in her nostrils almost every day of her life since that first voyage to Port Royale, she had rarely been down to look upon it since Will's return. The children had learned quickly that though her mother had sailed with pirates as a girl it would be their father who would tell them of the sea and take them to down to the quay to watch the ships unload.

For her the sea belonged to the past.

Now, as they travelled to the ship that would take them back to the Caribbean, she was shaken by a sudden fear, for the sea was also bound up with Calypso and her memories of the goddess she had travelled with, a goddess with a long memory. Though for her it was a lifetime ago for Calypso it would just the blink of an eye, and who could know what desires for revenge she might still harbour?

Yet Elizabeth knew that it was not fear of Calypso's vengeance that turned her heart as the carriage took them into the docks, but of the memories that the sight of the open ocean might bring her, of the drifting souls, her father's death and of Jack. But the thought that Jack might have a child somewhere in the world had brought her a strange sense of hope and the desire to lay all the ghosts to rest. If that son existed then she had no doubt that he would be wandering the Caribbean as his father had before him and they were sure to find word of him in Port Royale, or Tortuga.

Tortuga! The very name of the place stirred memories, of Jack and of James and of sailing on the Black Pearl not knowing what waited at the end of the journey.

Elizabeth closed her eyes and pushed the pictures away. That world was gone, and not only for her and Will, and the world was a smaller place than it had been then. Tortuga was just another Caribbean port now, commerce had taken the place of adventure and the merchants had replaced the explorers. Jack had called the Pearl the last real pirate threat in the Caribbean and he had been right, in the years after the battle of shipwreck he and the other pirate lords had quietly disappeared leaving only the stories behind to tell of the world they had known. What pirates that remained now were not the stuff of legends, and she felt no desire to meet them.

All the king of the fourth brethren court prayed for now was a calm sea, a fair wind and a swift and safe journey.


	5. Chapter 5

**Ship of the night - 5**

Will had not looked forward to the journey with any pleasure, the sea held no terrors for him any longer but nor did it hold much joy. For ten years he had sailed the Dutchman on the seas beyond the map, under stars no living man or woman ever saw and with no sight of the horizon of the human world. Those seas had held their own beauty, had possessed their own powers, but they had presented no threat to him or his crew or the souls they collected and ferried to that far and misty shore. The ship he travelled on now was no Flying Dutchman and the seas she rode were not those of the years of his servitude, for all that they looked the same, none knew that better than he did. From the moment that land disappeared he was only too aware of how deadly these waters could be and how frail were the timbers that cupped Elizabeth and himself in an illusion of safety.

Yet if the ship foundered and they found themselves in the waters the Dutchman sailed would it matter? There would be grief for those left behind, but that grief must come to them one day anyway, would the timing make it any less bitter? He knew enough to have no fear, for himself or for Elizabeth, and was grateful that he was blessed with a certainty that few had, the certainty of the shores beyond life, even though he knew nothing of the country they were gateway to. That had been Calypso's gift to them in return for their fears and losses, and it was something not to be dismissed lightly. He attended morning prayers with the officers and crew, as was expected of a respectable and prosperous passenger, always aware that this certainty divided him and his wife from those who must depend upon faith for their hope.

But for the first time he wondered what that knowledge, that certainty, had meant to Jack and James, men who had always had some faith perhaps. What, then, had it meant for Barbossa? Could any man still walk the path that he had taken before his death with that knowledge? Was that the reason that the Pirate Lords had quietly disappeared once Beckett had been defeated? With the certainty of the Dutchman and the far off seas before them, not just the fear, could they have continued to be what they were?

Yet that gift was a two edged sword, for there was no hope of forgiving oblivion to those who had seen, and past deeds must weigh heavily. As they did with Elizabeth.

He had come upon her that first morning out, standing alone, dress and hair blowing in the chilly wind, staring at the sea. She had been there long enough for her presence to be drawing attention, that and the undressed hair and the tears.  
"I had forgotten how big it is." She had said as he leant beside her.  
"I know, I had too."  
She had gone on staring at the horizon but her hand had found his,  
"Twenty years and more since I last sailed Will, and yet it all comes back to me as if it were yesterday, the movement of the decks, the smell of the salt, the hiss of the swell. I haven't missed it and yet now I can't imagine that I have ever been anywhere else."  
Will smiled and closed his fingers around hers feeling the cold of them and wondering how long she had been standing here remembering.  
"I know. We were never bred for sailors but the sea gets into you and somehow you never forget."

Elizabeth smiled at that though she didn't look at him.  
"No, how could we forget? Though we try, and least I do. But standing here it's as if the years since are a dream. I know that hard as I might stare into the glass I would not see the girl I was, but at this moment, with the sea all around us, I still have the feeling that if I were to look behind me I would see black sails against a blue sky and Jack Sparrow standing at the wheel."

There she had said it, the name that was never spoken between them, never mentioned except in stories for the children. There were no more children to tell those stories to now so maybe it was time they spoke of it between themselves. Perhaps it would have been better if they had done so before now, but they had agreed the day that Will returned that the past would be put behind them. They could never know what it was that had motivated Jack to put the heart beneath Will's hand and so they had agreed to accept his actions for what they were, a gift to be enjoyed. The most they could do in return was to keep his name, his legend, alive where it was safe, in the hearts and minds of their children. They had done that with great success but he was never mentioned between them, other than the toast they drank as a ritual on the anniversary of Will's return. Rum, in Jack's honour, though she had always hated it.

Why had she kept to that rule all these years? Was it because she feared that Will might once again believe that she had loved Jack? Or was it that talk of past betrayals might open fears of new ones? How much was the comfort between them dependent upon the things they never said? A frightening thought. Or was it because she feared that it would open other conversations best left unspoken, expose scabbed grief that was best left unpicked?

Except that those scabs had been well picked in too many a long and sleepless night.

She had travelled beyond the map, to the end of the world and the edge of eternity, to bring Jack back from death but it had changed nothing, all their rescue had done was underline the injury she had caused. For the man who returned with them had not been the one she left behind, and the confusion and the hollow look in his eyes were as much a part of her nightmares as the sight of the Pearl sinking.

It seemed now as if her life had been defined by the things that were never said. Maybe if Jack and she had talked more in that journey back from the locker she could have explained and made it right, or even in those hours at Shipwreck, but she not tried and he had not sought her out. Why would he? His words to her in the moment before she left him to his ignominious death had shown that he understood her far better than she had understood herself. Pirate.

He could never have known how that single word would haunt her. That Jack had seemed to rediscover himself and forgive her had been no comfort, and still wasn't, for he had never expected much of others and she had realised that his anger had burned away to weary acceptance long before he had put Jones's heart beneath Will's dying hand. Was that why she could not speak of the past to Will, because she was afraid that it would show her to be what she feared? That, with ten years of separation between them, she had been afraid of Will seeing her for something other than the girl he remembered? Was she still afraid of that after all this time, after all she had, and had not, done.

For she had spent a lifetime trying not to be what Jack had known her to be and to be what Will had thought her. It was not only her roots and the habits of her girlhood that had driven her from the sea and into the shelter of blameless motherhood, though they had been powerful enough once the heat of battle was spent; most of all it had been the knowledge that if she stayed a pirate it would be Barbossa or Sao Feng that she would become, not Jack. He had known the similarities between them from the very beginning but he had only learned the differences later, and in so very brutal manner. Yet those differences might have defined her as much as the similarities. She knew that she had his ability to see past the forms and rules to what was necessary, and his occasional ruthlessness in carrying it through, but she lacked his patience, his acceptance of others, and his strange and unexpected capacity for generous compassion. No, she was not like Jack at all. She would have gloried in the bloody fall of her enemies, would strike again and again when the need was past, whereas Jack would do what was necessary but no more, and would feel only regret that it had come to that.

In that he was like Will.

"Elizabeth?"  
Will's voice pulled her from her wondering, and she turned to look at him for the first time since he had joined her.  
"I'm sorry Will, for a moment I was somewhere else."  
"On the Pearl." Not a question.  
She nodded and gripped his hand, before looking back to the sea so grey and cold before them, like the ashes of a long dead fire,  
"Yes on the Pearl, with Jack and Cotton and Mr Gibbs. I can't help wondering about them sometimes."  
"Wondering what happened to Jack?"  
"Yes, do you?"  
"Sometimes. Beckett told me that the world was shrinking, that Jack had to find a place or die. Unpleasant though he was, he was also right. Jack's world is gone, and yes I sometimes wonder where he finally made berth."  
"Or if he did."

"Somehow I think Jack found his way."  
It was there, the moment, if he didn't tell her now he would never be able to explain why he hadn't. Now or never. Will drew a deep breath,  
"To tell the truth I've been thinking about Jack rather a lot recently, well more about the Pearl."  
Elizabeth turned to look at him but he could read nothing in her face, even after all these years she could still hide from him if she wished, but he pressed on,  
" Jon told me a story, a curious story that intrigued me and I've found others since. They probably mean nothing, just sailor's tales, but it might possibly be something else. Or maybe I just wish it was."

She shifted uncomfortably and there was something close to fear and resignation in her face,  
"I know. The ship of the night."

***

The voyage passed in a haze of memory. Day melted into day, the horizon forever before them and all sight of land behind. The sea was cold and bleak, the waves huge and angry, as unlike the Caribbean as a millpond was white water, yet the sense of familiarity still grew.

The crew became accustomed to seeing them standing together on the deck when others huddled below, no questions were asked once it became clear that they had sailed before. Elizabeth was aware of the curious glances she earned but they did not bother her and eventually even they ceased; she did not know what Will had told them but whatever it was the story had been accepted and her presence brought nothing more than a nod of recognition in passing. It was strange that it all seemed so familiar, for her sea faring had formed such a small part of her life, yet on deck so much returned to her it was as if she had never been away. She would watch Will's face and wonder how much more he had to remember, things that were forever locked in his head for the want of words to explain them. For how can death be explained to the living, or immortality to those rooted in time and space? She knew it, yet still it pained her after all these years that there was so much she couldn't share.

Yet she had the consolation that another secret was shared and with no damage done, and the ship of the night no longer stood between them. They had poured over the stores he had collected, exclaiming and wondering and, yes, they could admit it now, even hoping. The tales had led to more remembrance and laughter mixed with tears and a greater ease between them than there had been for some time. Elizabeth had not realised how much she had missed this ease and for the first time in many months the loss of her children did not seem so tragic, nor did her life feel so desolate.

Will had hesitated to share the last story with her, still unsure of her reaction, but in the end he knew there could be no other way, she had as much right as he to see it. He had sat beside her while she read it, watching her eyes widen and her fingers tighten on the paper,  
"Is this possible Will?"  
"You see from his letter that he insists it is. Certainly his descriptions are accurate. Either he is telling the truth or someone is perpetuating an elaborate fraud upon me for reasons I cannot guess. That is to trick us into confessing our dealings with Jack and Beckett is a possibility that has occurred to me, but why would any one bother now, it is too long ago to matter and the king and the admiralty have other things to concern them. Still he insists that the ship that pulled them from the sea was the Black Pearl and that her captain was called Sparrow."

She turned the letter over in her hand and reread that paragraph,  
"Well his description of him fits. If he hasn't seen Jack then it is certainly someone like. Yet it isn't possible Will, these events happened not three years ago and Jack would be an old man by now."  
Will nodded,  
"I know. But you told me that Jack was very much like his father and that makes me wonder if it is his son."  
"Or someone trading on his name and legend."  
"Aye it could be that, but why would anyone chose to do so? This man isn't a pirate Elizabeth, if he were then there might be some sense in it. But he takes nothing from them and asks nothing of them. He leads them to safety or saves them from the sea, why would he need to hide who and what he is?"  
" I don't know. But why would a son of Jack's adopt such a strange and secretive course? Jack gloried in his legend, took every opportunity to add to it, why would his son be any different."  
"Maybe because it is different. Jack and his father were not at ease with each other, maybe that pattern is repeated in the next generation. Maybe Jack's son feels some need to atone for what his father was."

She thought about that, remembering the strain between Jack and Teague,  
Then she shook her head,  
"Jack was not Teague, I cannot see why a child of his should feel such a need."  
Will had smiled, remembering Teague as he had been as they sailed the eternal seas,  
"Teague would no doubt have said the same."  
Elizabeth thought about that in silence then shrugged,  
"But even if that were the case Will, it still leaves much to be explained. Where does the Pearl come from and where does she go to, what is this weather they all report and why would any one need to hide from such a charitable act?"  
Will shook his head,  
"I don't know, I find it as confusing as you do. But there is something strange about the ship and her crew, this man Blane felt it and it troubled him. So much so that he could barely bring himself to write it."  
Elizabeth looked at him with raised brows,  
"Why do you say that? His story is strange I admit, and he obviously felt that something extraordinary had happened, but I see no reluctance in what he writes Will, only a desire to put the matter before one who might be able to make sense of it."

He sighed,  
"There is more, something that makes me sure there is a link between the stories and Jack. Something Blane saw and heard just after the Pearl picked them up, it both horrified and frightened him."  
Will reached into his pocket and pulled out a folded sheet, the writing on it very similar to that on the letter she held.  
"He sent me this later, by courier. He says that he could not bring himself to write all of his story while in his father house, for his father is a man of cloth, a good and devout man and would be mortified if he knew all his son's tale. This was written in his lodgings some days later. I have kept it on me ever since in deference to his feelings and because I know what such a tale would mean for him were it to become public."  
He handed it to her,  
"Read for yourself and tell me what it says to you."

The second letter was not so long, the lines crossed, and the writing sprawling in the writer's desire to be done with what he had to say quickly. At the end of it she had sat back and stared at the sky beyond the window remembering another long ago day, another long departed face. There was no doubt in her mind as she looked back at Will.  
"Calypso."


	6. Chapter 6

**Ship of the night - 6**

It was November when they reached the Sargasso, the blue skies and turquoise seas seeming gentle after the mighty heave of the Atlantic, and the warmth a caress on their skins after so many weeks of chilly winds. The officers were less comfortable, the hotter sun at odds with their heavy woollen jackets and the prickly curls of their wigs, occasionally casting envious looksat Will's lighter clothing and uncovered head.

As they entered the last weeks of the journey Will had found himself transported back to his first voyage, and to a frightened boy trying to to be a man for a little girl who had seemed like a princess to his untutored eyes. He had never known a girl like Elizabeth before, for though they had always been respectable his life with his mother had been hard once his father left, and young ladies with silk ribbons in their hair had played no part in it. He had never lost the guilt he had felt as a boy for not trading the piece of gold that had been his father's last offering, even though he had long known it would have made no difference to his mother's destiny; the struggle to keep them honest, and consumption, had sealed her fate before that cursed talisman had arrived.

But Elizabeth had been no tradesman's daughter or servant girl. She had captivated him then, long before he had understood the full measure of their difference in rank and prospects, and he had never been free of that enchantment. He had tried to respect the differences in their station but she had always made it hard to do, treating him first as friend and then as a suitor, regardless of her father's protests. Elizabeth had been her father companion as well as his daughter since her mother's premature death, and the niceties of a young ladies education had not always been observed. The governor's indulgence of his motherless only child had known no bounds, and if she were spoiled, and Will had known her to be that even then, well then it was not she who should bear the blame, for what else had she ever known? If she didn't sew so finely, well why should a governors daughter sew when she had servants to do it, and even if she didn't play the harp as well as she might she did sing prettily and dance with elegance and charm.

Nor was there reason for her father to call her to account, not when Will had been so careful of her good name. Until Jack appeared on their horizon there had been little cause for her to step far outside the bounds of maidenly propriety and the worst the gossips could say was that the governor's daughter had a most unfeminine taste in literature and poetry.

Yet it wasn't Jack who had started the chain of events that led them to grief and disaster but Elizabeth herself, for if she had not taken that piece of gold and hidden it then Barbossa would never have come for it and their stories would have been different. Whether they would have been better was another matter, and who could ever know that? None, not even Calypso. No one was more aware of this than Elizabeth herself. It had always formed a part of those nightmares that had been a constant during the years of their marriage.

For Will it was a long term sadness that since the day of his return there had been times when her dreams became dark and vengeful and played out to a backdrop of cannon and sword clash. Times when the hot blooded, grief fuelled acts of acts of a young girl's war took on a different colour and his words of comfort could not always help; though while he captained the Dutchman he had sought out all the souls sent on their way to the next world during those two blood spattered years and assured himself of their safety and their forgiveness. For him that had been enough, and his years as the ferryman of the seas had changed his perspective on both life and death. But it had not been enough for Elizabeth and the dark dreams had come with increasing frequency in the days before Emily's marriage, Will had seen the proof of that written in her face. He had been very afraid that they would more often still on this voyage back to the places that provided the backdrop for many of those same dreams.

Yet it hadn't been like that, she slept quietly by his side, the strained look had faded and the bloom was returning to her skin. They talked often of the past, maybe that was the difference, after the years of careful silence they were remembering together, speaking of things long avoided and of grief's, still real but now faded. The days after his departure on the Dutchman, the difficult days of her first pregnancy, his stumbling attempts at a reconciliation with his father, his worry for her safety and the only half acknowledged fear that her death in childbed would separate them forever, these and a hundred other past anxieties were taken out and examined then put away for ever.

Even so it seemed that the past was not lying silent, for last night he had dreamed of Calypso. In all the years since he had left the Dutchman he had never seen her, either waking or sleeping, yet she had been there last night. Tia Dalma again, standing on the shore line of the eternal sea, her hair dampened by the mists that shrouded them, her eyes dark and secret, one finger beckoning as if enticing him back to the waters he had left behind so long ago. He had heard her laughter too, echoing across the sea and dancing on the wind, and words that he could not quite make out but that he thought said "Tis time ya come back to me William Turner. Tis time."

He had woken in alarm afraid of disturbing Elizabeth, but she slept on peacefully even as he rose and dressed and went out to stare at the sea.

In the dawn light the waters looked as they had done the day they set out for Singapore, both of them bowed under their private burdens neither sure where they were going or why. For he had not wanted Jack to return, he had admitted that to himself long ago, and if there had been a way of bringing the Pearl back and leaving Jack behind he might well have taken it. He would have left Jack, who had saved both him and Elizabeth more than once, in Jones's hell for a father who had abandoned him, and he still wasn't sure why. Or maybe he did know.

There were many reasons why he preferred not to think of Jack Sparrow, but that one moment of vulnerability on the deck of the Pearl was perhaps the most shaming, "did none of you come to save me just because you missed me?" Will still cringed inside when he recalled it, for until that moment he had let himself forget that Jack was just a man; he had remembered that he was a pirate, a legend and a story, but not that he was a man. Jack had faced the noose with dignified composure but that did not mean that he wished for death, nor that he would accept it quietly while there was any other choice.

How blind the young could be. Secure in his youthful sense of invulnerability he had forgotten that Jack had been fighting for survival and desperate to escape Jones. When, on the Dutchman, his father had asked him what he would have done in Jack's place he had been unable to answer; for until Jones sword pierced his chest his own death had seemed impossible to him. He had seen the same in his own children and had wondered if that was how Jack had seen Elizabeth and himself, a strangely uncomfortable thought. But always one that brought a smile, 'young master Turner' was how Jack had referred to him, had that view changed by the time they stood together on the Dutchman's deck? He hoped so, but he could not be sure.

"Mr Turner?" a voice came from behind him, "You are not ill I trust? 'Tis early to be on deck for those who do not have to be."  
Will turned to meet the bleary eyes of the second mate, Littlejohn if he remembered correctly.  
"I'm well enough, but it's many years since I sailed these seas and I find myself eager to see as much of them as I can."  
"You were a sailor?"  
Will smiled at the man's surprise,  
"You would not have called me such, not then. Just a young man caught out in events bigger than himself."  
"You became a sailor though? I had thought you a merchant or such."  
Will's smile became tinged with sadness,  
"Aye I became a sailor, sailed the world, and not just the Caribbean. Ten years and more, but my heart was not in it," Will smiled wider on the last words, so much truer than this man would ever, or could ever, know, "I returned to be with Elizabeth and my children as I promised my father I would."  
"He was a sailor too?"  
"Aye, and a much better sailor than I would ever be for he loved the sea," he looked at the man beside him, "as I suspect you do."  
The man turned and looked out to the ocean still darkened under the paling dawn sky,  
"That I do. I've tried to settle but it's never worked for me. I married and I would have lived ashore for her sake if she had asked, but she never did and she died with our first child. Since then there has only been the sea."  
Will nodded,  
"I have been lucky, Elizabeth and all our children survived."

They stood in silence for a moment then Will sighed,  
"At least there is no fear of pirates now."  
Littlejohn nodded,  
"No, but it must have been different when you were a lad."  
"Yes, there were pirates enough then."  
"So I've heard, took the Navy many a long year to clear these seas of them. Did you ever come across any sir?"  
Will nodded, the memories of the past drowning out his usual caution  
" I was here when Barbossa sacked Port Royale. The night he kidnapped the governors daughter."  
"Barbossa?"  
"Barbossa, he was captain of the Black Pearl then, before Jack took her back for the first time."  
"Jack? Do you mean Jack Sparrow!"  
Will caught the man's look and cursed his unwariness, wondering how a prosperous tradesman could account for knowing such a person. He decided not to try, they were a long way from England and, as he had told Elizabeth so many times, it was a lifetime ago.  
"Aye."  
Curiosity was clearly written in the man's face but his astonishment was the greater,  
"Jack Sparrow! Now there's a name to conjure up some tales. Pirate Lord of the Caribbean wasn't he?"  
"So I've heard."

"Well fancy you having met Jack Sparrow. When I was a lad and new to the sea I sailed with a man who claimed to have crewed with him. High price he had on his head then, highest of them all so say."  
"Yes I heard that too."  
"Well I never. Jack Sparrow. I didn't think to ever meet anyone who'd known him. Stole more than one ship from the navy, you know, and not only the English navy either. French and Spanish had a price on him too."  
"It's true that he stole a navy ship from Port Royale, that's how I met him."  
"Ah, cabin boy were you?"  
"You might say that."  
"Well at least you're standing here to tell the tale, there's been many a pirate who would have slit a young boys throat just for being aboard. Not Sparrow though, at least not according to old Raggy. Said he was a fair captain and even handed with his crew, never denied quarter either, not to ship or town, nor raised sword or pistol to wimmin or child. Strange man old Raggy said, clever as a barrel full of monkeys and cunning as a snake, well he'd have to be to steal a ship from the navy wouldn't he? A rare favourite with the ladies so say, handsome man and always looked like the Pirate Lord. Mind you old Raggy wasn't what you'd have called well endowed in his upper story so there's no telling how much is true,"  
"That sounds about right, from what I saw of him at least."

The seaman sidled closer,  
"And you really saw him? What was he like? Lot of stories about Jack Sparrow and some you can't believe. They say he bedded the sea goddess herself and that he cheated Davy Jones and came back from the locker, and that he spent days alone on an island with some high born lady and she came back as pure as she started, well I ask you how likely is any of that?"  
Will smiled broadly,  
"Doesn't sound very likely at all does it? But he was a clever man from all I heard and he certainly was an exception to every rule, I think he prided himself on it. But it was a long time ago and stories become twisted as the years go by. Jack Sparrow is gone, so perhaps what he was doesn't matter any more."  
Littlejohn drew a deep breath and dropped his voice,  
"Perhaps. perhap not. You said you saw him Mr Turner, what did he look like?" he paused and looked around him for a moment only meeting Will's frown when he was sure they were still alone,  
"See there are these stories that Sparrow isn't dead. Friend of mine says he met him once, 'bout four year back, in an inn. The man had the brand and the tattoo on his arm, he drank a powerful lot of rum that night and when he left he said he was going back to the Pearl, and when my friend asked which pearl he meant he laughed and said the Black Pearl."

Will shrugged, though he was intrigued.  
"Forgive me if I say that seems unlikely. I expect your friend had drunk a lot of rum too, and his companion thought to tease, or tell a story to pay his shot."  
"Aye, that might be true. But there are other stories, of a ship that might be that Black Pearl. The tales I've heard of Sparrow say he was dark and tanned with braided hair decked with trinkets. My friend now he swears this man looked just like that."  
Will nodded slowly,  
"Jack Sparrow did look like that, but it would be easy enough for a man to copy. If an impostor wanted to claim Sparrow's name it is what he is likely to have done."  
"True again, I suppose. Though he also says that the following day he heard that a ship with black sails had been seen by a fishing boat rounding the point, but that it had disappeared into fret from which it did not emerge."  
"We both know there could be many reasons for that, not least a sleepy observer."  
Will turned his eyes back to the horizon.  
"No the Jack Sparrow I met all those years ago is gone."  
He smiled wryly,  
"But it would have given him great pleasure to think that we would be talking about him so many years later. Few men's names live long beyond their death, yet it seems that his does."  
The sailor laughed at that, and started to turn away,  
"Aye, but whatever the truth of it, he was always a good story."

Will nodded,  
"That he was."


	7. Chapter 7

**Ship of the night - 7**

"I dreamed of Jack last night," Elizabeth told him over breakfast, "as we first knew him Will. When you and he chased Barbossa to rescue me and the Pearl."  
She spread preserve on her bread,  
"I saw him as he was on the dockside, all dripping wet and staring at the medallion, and as he was on that island, scowling at me for burning all the rum and storming off because he so wanted to shoot me but couldn't do it. Maybe it's all the stories but I feel as if he's close to us here. After all this time it seems that it doesn't hurt to remember him any more."  
"I know. In fact I've another story to add to our collection."  
While she sipped her tea he told her of Littlejohn's story.  
"Is it so impossible Will? Could it be Jack's son?"  
Will shrugged,  
"Perhaps, but it seems unlikely that a son would bear the same tattoo or the same brand. That sounds more like an impostor using the stories of Jack in some way to gain some advantage. But what advantage it might be I confess that I can't imagine."

Elizabeth considered that for a moment, head tilted,  
"And what of Calypso? If the man were an impostor then why would she lend her weight to the charade? She was fond of Jack in her way, maybe more than fond, and I can't imagine that she would aid any impostor on claiming his legend. But that letter was clear enough Will, it was Calypso that appeared on the Black Pearl. Who else knew of Tia Dalma to copy her so well, and how would they do so? No fairground trick could have created that scene, nor scared a sensible man in the way it did. No it had to be Calypso herself. Which adds another layer of wonder to the tales."

"I dreamed last night too," Will said slowly as he poured himself more tea, "not of Jack but of Calypso, it seemed that she was calling to me, telling me to return to her."  
Elizabeth frowned,  
"But she released you, Jones is returned and she has no need of you." Anxiety suddenly blanched her face, "does she?"  
Will shook his head,  
"No, she has no need of me. Jones may no longer be her lover but he is forgiven and is her captain again and he has learned his lesson well, he will not neglect the duty."

Elizabeth sighed, and she spoke reluctantly with worry in her eyes,  
"I thought that I heard Jack talking to me in the dream, and he spoke of Calypso too. He told me that there is still a debt to be paid her. He was telling me to be careful, " she smiled across at him, "to be careful of you."  
She sighed again,  
"I'm sorry Will perhaps we should not have come after all. Maybe it is tempting fate for us to return here, we could have lost so much more than we did; perhaps there is a debt to be paid."  
Will leaned across the table and put his hand over hers,  
"Then we will learn from Jack and do our best to cheat it. I am not an idealistic boy any longer, if cheating fate is what is needed to spend more years with you then I will cheat to the best of my ability. The gods have advantage enough, I see no reason to give them an easy victory."  
Elizabeth laughed and closed her fingers around his, looking so much like the governor's daughter that it seemed that time had rolled back,  
"Jack would be proud of you. As I am. If it comes to cheating then no one will enter into it more whole heartedly than I, " her voice dropped and her eyes danced, "Captain Turner."  
Will raised his teacup to her,  
"I'm glad to hear it, your Majesty."

***

They spent the rest of the day in gentle pursuits, reading and writing letters for their children and talking of the past. As night fell they found themselves strolling under the darkening sky, the warm winds stirring their hair as the smells of cooking stared to drift across the decks. Hand in hand they stood and stared at the sea watching the stars appear and the moon rise, near full, above the horizon.

About them the ships crew went about their business, a business that now had the feel of familiaraity again.  
"It's as if we have never been away," Elizabeth whispered to him. "How strange that it all feels so familiar."  
But Will was not listening, he was staring out to sea his eyes wide.  
"Will?" Elizabeth queried.  
"Did you see it?" he asked slowly.  
"See what?"  
"Out there, a ship, another ship."  
She turned to stare but all she could see was water and sky.  
"It's gone." Will breathed quietly, "If it was there at all."  
He looked at her his face serious in the lamplight,  
"I thought I saw a ship out there, a ship with black sails."  
Elizabeth turned back to the sea but there was nothing to be seen.  
"If it was the Pearl, then she'll be back," was all Elizabeth said.

In silent companionship they turned towards their cabin and dinner.

***

They had arrived in Port Royale under cloudless skies and to air hot with sun and lack of wind. Will ran a finger around his collar and wondered if the temperature was responsible for the unease he felt, or whether the ghosts of the past were coming to stalk him too. The last days of the journey had been ones of bitter sweet pleasures, Elizabeth seemed to bloom again, the strain leaving her face and the lines of weariness that had become so marked those last months in England fading away. Even the weather did not seem to weary her now.

Their rooms were stifling and the streets and lanes were deep in dust while the town that was once so bustling seemed quiet and lazy beneath the pall of heat. On the quayside sailors whispered of unnatural weather and terrible storms to come, in the taverns and inns old men shook their heads and talked of strange signs and portents, and in the brothels the doxies fanned themselves and bemoaned the weariness that kept the customers from the doors. Even the tide itself seemed to be waiting for something.

On the third day after their arrival the maidservants told them at breakfast of a panic in the town for the night watch at the fort swore they had seen a strange ship anchored off the point, a ship with black sails. It had come no closer, she said, but the soldiers swore that it was watching the town and the Commodore had called on all able bodied men to check their weapons and be prepared. The lanes of the town were agog with worry that the ghost ship, the Black Pearl had returned to resume her raiding.

"Her raiding days were some time ago, at least from what I have been told. Has the Black Pearl been seen around here much since then?" Will had asked her.  
"Oh no sir," she smiled prettily, not truly concerned by the gossip, "not from land at least, though there are plenty around her who will tell you they have seen her at sea."  
She busied herself with the crocks,  
"Mind there are those who tell you they've seen Jack Sparrow in the settlements up the coast too. But myself I doubt it, he'd be old now, older than you, begging your pardon sir, but they always describe him as the stories speak of him." She grinned as she picked up the loaded tray. "Now I'll grant he must have been a fine man when he was young, at least from what they say, but even the legendary Captain Sparrow couldn't look thirty at seventy now could he? Yet that's how they describe him."

Elizabeth had been silent throughout this conversation but as the maid left the room she looked at him with concern,  
"The Pearl again! Grant you it's likely they would remember her here but it sounds as if her visit, if that's what it was, is a new event."  
"Yes," Will nodded thoughtfully, "None of the stories talk of seeing her from land, only ever at sea. Why would that change now?"  
Elizabeth shook her head,  
"I don't know. But I dreamt of Jack again last night. He was on the deck of the Pearl and he was trying to warn me of something, but I couldn't hear him properly. I could see him clear as day but the wind and waves drowned out his voice. But it was Jack."  
She frowned down at her empty cup,  
"He reached out and touched me, and Will, he was so real that I could feel the rings on his fingers and that scrap of lace around his wrist. Why should I dream of him now? For years I haven't let myself think of him, why can't I forget him now?"  
Will looked at her with sadness in his eyes, for he knew only too well that she had thought of Jack in her nightmares,  
"I don't know, any more than I know why I saw the Pearl out there." He smiled and reached a reassuring hand across the table, "Maybe it's just being here again, being close to the places where we knew him."

She smiled at him,  
"Yes maybe it is. In fact Mr Turner, I propose that we see a few more of them. I have a fancy to walk the ramparts this morning."  
Will smiled back,  
"And maybe talk to a guard or two Mrs Turner?"  
"Perhaps." She said airily. "Sentry duty must be most tedious I'm sure they would be grateful for a little diversion."  
"I'm sure they would."  
She jumped up from the table, the impulsive girl he had once known suddenly there before him again,  
"Then I will fetch my hat."  
She was gone from the room in a swirl of skirts and anticipation.

Will watched the door close behind her with sudden fear; that other sense of his was nibbling at him, he knew that the web of connections had just been twitched again and he could not say why. Yet sometimes he would feel as if he was close to understanding what it meant, feel too that it was something that he didn't want to know. But maybe his own dreams were to blame for that, just as Elizabeth had dreamt of Jack again so he had dreamt of Calypso.

The first time she had come to him it had been very much a dream, the second a half dream, but on this, the third occasion, she was as real as ever she had been. Tia Dalma again, dressed as she had been as they brought up from the brig on that last day of her imprisonment. She did not speak but stood and watched him with that smile of hers, the promise of everything and nothing in her eyes. The seas behind her were not those of the battle but the waters beyond the harbour of Port Royale, and far out on the horizon he thought he could see a ship with black sails. Something inside him told him that he had seen this before and yet he could not recall where, for he had never watched the Pearl from such a distance. But the Pearl's presence in this none dream was important for he couldn't help but feel that it offered his final hope.

With a sigh Will tried to shake of his mood of melancholy. They had come to lay the  
past to rest and that they would do. Today they would walk where once Norrington had proposed marriage to Eilizabeth and look down on the rocks that he had not risked and the water from which a pirate had plucked her. Both of them would smile and remember and would think of how different their lives might have been if Norrington had risked the dive or if Jack had not. Neither would speak of loss or gain, though both might wonder at it, but be grateful that they were standing there. They would talk of her hatred of that corset and what fashion was responsible for, and they would make plans for bringing their children here one day, both knowing that they would never do so. While they talked they would both stare out to sea and wonder if the ship with black sails, the ship of the night was out there somewhere and if it was indeed the Pearl. They would talk again of Jack and Will would see the shadow of guilt in her eyes, though it seemed lessened now, and he would wonder as he always did at such times what it was that they had exchanged as she left him to his death that had burned such regret in her.

***

As she donned her hat and changed her shoes Elizabeth wondered what it was that had caused the fleeting sadness in Will's face. It was not her dream of Jack for they had resolved that long ago, and this dream had neither been vengeful nor bitter.

For the first time in many years she found that she think of Jack without remorse or guilt. In her recent dreams he had been neither angry nor accusing, nor had he been the man they had brought away from the locker. No he had been Jack as she had first known him, the Jack of swagger, flying braids and flashing smile, a man of an almost foolhardy self confidence. Jack the pirate, unrepentant and yet strangely honest, a good man for all his waywardness and failings. In these dreams his smile was kind again, not the knowing and mocking version of those last moments before his death, and there was a laugh in his voice; yet it seemed there was also gentleness in his look and a strange sadness in his eyes.

For a moment she stood at the window watching the bay and wondering where Jack's life had taken him and if he had been happy. She hoped that he had been, and that if he had met his inevitable demise that he done so without fear of the locker and in some better way than at the end of a rope; and if he hadn't, then she wished for him a white beach, an uninterrupted horizon and enough, though not too much, rum. He would be an old man, strange that she couldn't picture Jack as such when the years were clearly mirrored in her own face, and, to a lesser extent, in Will's too.

She pushed the thought away, she felt better than she had for many months, and though the glass told her different there were times when she felt like the Governors daughter again. She felt as if she was home again, though in truth for only a small portion of her life had these islands been home; all it needed to be complete was the sight of a ship with black sails on the horizon. Elizabeth smiled to herself, she would like an answer to the puzzle before they returned to England and if it was the Pearl they talked of then she wanted to know who it was that stood at her helm, who it was that looked so very much like Jack Sparrow.

But there was no ship on the horizen, no black sails were to be seen this morning. There was time yet, she reminded herself, and with that happy thought she tied the ribbons of her bonnet and hurried down the stairs to walk with Will.

***

The days passed on a wave of memory; there were few people who remembered them and fewer still who recognised them, yet as the news spread of their arrival there was a steady stream of visitors to their rooms and a respectable sheaf of invitations to dinners and picnics and musical evenings. The social life of the islands had changed little, and her father's rank was recalled by many, while his death, and her adventures, like Will's old trade, were forgotten by most, even assuming they had ever been known.

Elizabeth was happy to wander arm in arm with Will at these occasions, taking pride in his still youthful looks and thoughtful conversations. She was happy too to sit with the chaperons and talk of her children and their prospects, their successes and the grandchildren she hoped would come. Yet her tranquillity was not complete, for there were times when the candles were guttering in the breeze through open windows she would feel as if something momentous was about to happen, an unease just as she had that night when the Pearl first appeared. Then she would look across to Will and see a shadow in his face, a look of something akin to confusion, and she would suddenly wonder if they had done right to come.

Then last evening, when she had gone to such an open window, to cool her flushed face and slow her racing heart, she had looked out and seen black sails on the horizon. She had searched the room in search of Will but not found him,  
"Where is my husband?" she had asked of a passing servant.  
"In the garden madam," came the stately reply,  
She had gathered up her skirts and hurried outside to find him.

Will had been standing by the fountain staring out to sea when she came upon him, clasping his arm she pulled him towards her surprised to find him so stiff and tense,  
"Will did you see it? I am sure I saw a ship with black sails"  
He drew a deep breath and turned to smile slightly at her,  
"I saw it."  
"Was it the Pearl?" she asked knowing that Will's eyesight remained more acute than her own.  
He nodded, sadly it seemed to her,  
"It looked like her, and under full canvas too."  
"On her way here?"  
"She looked to be, and in a hurry."  
"Do you think she has heard that we are here and is coming to visit?"  
"Why should she? None of her crew would know who we are, not now."  
"But if it's Jack son!"  
"Even so why would he come? He may not even have known his father, other than through the stories. Just because he chooses to look like the infamous Captain Sparrow it doesn't mean that he learned our story at Jack's knee."

That caused Elizabeth to smile,  
"I don't think I would want to be part of any story a child learned at Jack's knee," she said.  
Will clasped his hand around her arm,  
"No, I think you might be right about that."  
He looked back to the horizen but the black sails were gone,  
"It seems that whoever it is they are not coming here."  
He drew her hand through his arm and turned them both around,  
"But it's getting late, even if the ship of the night were to make port this evening I don't think it would be here her crew would be headed. So I'll beg a final turn around the floor with you Mrs Turner then home I think."

***

Elizabeth slept deeply that night, worn out by the days spent walking and the evenings dancing. If she dreamt of Jack again then there was no sign of it.

Will however did not sleep well, dreams of Calypso mingling with recollections of his life since he had left her service, dreams of his children and his business, of their house and friends and of Elizabeth with their babies in her arms. Yet always behind the dream pictures he could see the shadow of black sails and hear the laugh of a goddess.

'A life well lived' he though to himself as sleep retreated, a life he had almost lost to a sword of his own devising. He had lain for a while watching Elizabeth sleep but as the sky lightened he rose and sat at the window, looking over the stories of the ship of the night and watching the town he had once fought to defend begin to throw off sleep. The ship with black sails was out there somewhere he was sure of it now, why then did he find himself suddenly wishing that it wasn't.

As the days began and the sounds of life began to drift up to his window he put the papers aside and tried to analyse his sudden unease. His thoughts were disturbed by the sound of the bolts being drawn downstairs and the sound of boots on the cobbles outside, he glanced out of the window to see a man passing out, Will smiled to himself for the reveller was obviously heading home and clearly wished to be there before his absence was noted, yet as he watched the man as he progressed up the lane a sense of unease gripped him. The roll of the man's walk, and the set of his shoulders, seemed familiar, yet there was nothing about him to give cause for concern. True he did not look like a merchant or soldier to be worried about being found not in his bed at dawn, but he was about his business and was no concern of Will Turners, and yet...

At the top of the lane, in the shadow of a cobblers sign the man halted for a moment, hesitated as if uncertain whether to come or go, finally he continued on his way. Will watched him unsure of why he did so, but as the lane crossed another the man stopped again casting one quick look back down the way he came. For a moment Will stared in disbelief on the face of Jack Sparrow, before the man swung right and disappeared from view,

***


	8. Chapter 8

**Ship of the night - 8**

Jack!

Will took no time to reflect on how unlikely this sight had been but instead hurried down the stairs, still in his night attire. The maids cast him curious looks that turned to shrugs when he asked if anyone had just left; as he hurried out through the open door and into the early morning street they went back to their chores and hid their smiles at 'quality ways'.

The air was lazy, and already heavy with the promise of the day's heat. Will looked up at a cloudless sky and wondered, not for the first time, at the lack of wind. But he had no time for such speculations, ignoring the startled looks of the maids with brooms about their business and the apprentices throwing open shutters he hurried up the street towards the cobblers sign. The man he had seen so clearly so little time before was nowhere to be seen. Unconcerned by the stares he drew he cupped his hands about his mouth and shouted up the street in the direction the man had headed.  
"Jack, Jack Sparrow. Where are you? Jack. It's me Will Turner. Jack!"  
But no head was poked around a corner, no hat popped around a doorframe and no voice answered his cry. With a sigh he headed back down the street and towards the inn.

'Of course there was no sign of Jack' he told himself. 'It must have been a dream.' So many hours pouring over those stories on a night when he had slept so badly it would not be a surprise if he had dozed in his chair and dreamed that he saw Jack from the window. And yet.....

He returned to their apartments where Elizabeth was still sleeping, the sheaf of papers lay on the table just as he had set them down. The time between then and now was so short when, then, had he fallen asleep? Yet he must have slept, for he would swear that it had been no son or impersonator that he had seen turn back to look down this street, but the man himself; Jack Sparrow and no older than the day he had last seen him standing on the Pearl watching Elizabeth sail towards their bridal beach. The dark, dreadlocked, hair had been free of silver threads and as long and thick as ever; the beads and baubles plaited in it swaying as he had inclined his head. Even at this distance he had seen the dark of the man's eyes, and the familiar outline of moustache and beard, the line of cheek and jaw had been unchanged and his tan had not faded. Even the clothes had been much the same. It had been Jack, he was sure of it, and yet he knew that could not be, for Jack was older than he, and the glass showed him that he was no longer a young man.

But for all that he was sure it had been Jack, and somehow, for some reason he could not explain, he was not surprised; not surprised by seeing Jack, nor by the fact that Jack was so little changed.

Will crossed to the bed where Elizabeth was sleeping and looked down on her. The hair spread across the pillow seemed to shine, the colour deeper and less faded than he was sure it had been in England. The weariness was falling away from her and her spirits seem to rise with each passing day, if this was what returning here had done for her then he could only thank god for granting them the success and the opportunity to make it possible. He could only pray to that the guilt and nightmares that had crowded these last two years would continue to fade as her health returned, and that the improvement would when they returned home.

He reached out and touched her face. Smiling as she stirred a little in her sleep, there were no sign of nightmares today. Will let his finger trace a line to her throat feeling her heart beat in time with his own, he had always loved her and he loved her still, from the day he first saw her to the last day of their time together he would love her. He had never doubted that it should be so, though the blacksmith had never hoped that his love could be anything more than from a far. But their destinies had been entwined and they had had so much more then he, they, could ever have hoped for.

Most of that thanks to Jack.

Jack, somehow it always came back to Jack these days and yet there had been years when he had not thought of the man, how was that possible?

Elizabeth stirred, opening her eyes and smiling sleepily up at him.  
"Is it time for breakfast?" she asked, "am I late rising?"  
"No, you're not late, I'm early. I had a poor night and sat up reading, " he indicated the pile of stories on the wine table, "then I fell asleep and dreamed of Jack. I gave the maids a fright tearing down the stair convinced that I had seen him." He smiled, "but it must have been a dream because it was Jack as he was, not what he must be now."  
"An old man." She smiled, "somehow I can't see that either." Elizabeth took his hand, "I dreamed about him again last night, so maybe I communicated my dream to you. Did he look sad? For he did so in my dream. He was talking about you again, but I couldn't hear what he was saying, it was as if he was in a storm and all I could hear was the wind and waves."  
"But you seem more comfortable talking about him now?"  
"Yes." She sat up and watched as he piled pillows behind her head, "It's as if coming here has resolved all my fears and doubts. I remember him as he was when we knew him and not the picture I have painted in my mind across the years. Jack was a good man and he did not bear grudges, he will have forgiven me, I am sure of that now."

"Were you ever unsure?" Will asked with a smile.  
Elizabeth leaned back and looked at him with sombre eyes,  
"Yes, for a long time I was unsure. These last two years the past has become a burden and yet I don't know why. We had such happiness Will! Why it should be that at a time of such joy and fulfilment the old nightmares stirred I don't know. But they did come back and with such persistence and vividness they frightened me. I argued with myself and raged at myself but still they would not let me be."  
She shrugged and looked down as she straightened the sheet,  
"Maybe I felt guilt for being so happy, I had everything I ever wanted and I had killed the man who twice made it possible, and in such a way," she swallowed convulsively, "I could believe that he would forgive me the killing of him Will, but not the manner of it."  
"But now?"  
She smiled again,  
"Now I think that it was a long time ago and I cannot change it and that I'm doing Jack as much disservice in fearing his bitterness now as I did fearing his cowardice then."

Will closed his hand over her fingers,  
"Then coming here has been worth it, more than worth it."  
He got to his feet with laugh,  
"But enough talk of pirates Mrs Turner, it is my intention to wholly occupy your thoughts for the rest of our time here. So what say you to an early breakfast, then a stroll down to the quay before the sun makes the streets an oven? Then. well I think we can find ways to amuse ourselves. "

***

The days whirled by, merging into weeks. Rounds of walks and talks and quiet moments spent together, but only one more sighting of the ship of the night.

The day before they quit Port Royale they left the maid to the packing the presents they were taking home and took a carriage ride out to the to the quiet beach where Will had first taught her to use a sword.

Elizabeth sat on the rocks where once her maid and footman had sat and watched over her, looking out to sea and feeling closer to the girl she had been then than for many years. Will seated on the sand beside her was struck again by how the years seemed to have slipped away, showing a glimpse once more of the girl he had risked everything for. He had not been so surprised when she leapt to her feet, kilted up her skirts and demanded that they duel here one last time. With driftwood sticks for swords they chased each other up and down the beach for more than an hour, before collapsing in each other's arms, weary and sore but too happy for words.

Finally they had retraced their steps up the beach and the slope to the waiting carriage and turned back towards Port Royale. As they turned round for one last look at the cove they saw her on the horizon, sails black as midnight against the blue of the afternoon sky.  
"There she is Will, look. It is the Pearl, I'm sure of it." Elizabeth exclaimed. "But she isn't heading towards us," disappointment crept into her voice, then regret. " She heading away from Port Royale, do you think Jack's son came to visit us after all and found us not there?"  
Will smiled and shook his head,  
"No Elizabeth, if he had they would have told him where we had gone, and that we would return soon. If it is Jack's son that sails the Pearl it wasn't us that he came to see."  
"No," she agreed with a sigh, "so we will not solve that mystery after all. But we do know that it is the Pearl even if we can't know who is aboard her." She looked back towards the far away ship, "but I would have liked to know the answer. Where does she come from Will and why? Is it Jack or his son, and if it isn't why does her captain take such trouble to look like him?"  
Will shook his head suddenly dismayed by the sight of the black sailed ship,  
"I don't know. Perhaps it is better that we don't. Enough that we know she is still out there." He smiled softly at Elizabeth, "We can imagine who we like at her helm, even Jack himself if it so pleases us."

The ship was disappearing into the distance and Elizabeth looked back at her husband,  
"Yes we can. I like that idea, Jack still sailing his beloved Pearl." She giggled, "maybe Calypso made him immortal too, allowed him to sail the seas forever, just as Davy Jones does."  
Will felt his throat tighten and blinked a sudden mist from his eyes,  
"Perhaps she did," he said as lightly as he could. "Maybe that is the answer after all, the Dutchman for the dead and the Pearl for the living."  
Elizabeth laughed,  
"I doubt the Calypso is so generous but it is a nice idea." She clasped his hand, "Just like you to think of such a thing, Will. Yes, I think I will have that for the answer. Jack and the Pearl, together forever. Maybe even Jack, his son and the Pearl forever. What do you think of that?"  
"Jack and son of his together on the same ship? Somehow I doubt that they would survive it, certainly one of them would go mad."  
She laughed and turned back towards the now empty sea. Will felt a tightening in his chest as he watched her and wondered why he was suddenly taken with such a feeling of emptiness and sadness.

***

They left Port Royale to cloudless skies and suffocating heat; no breath of wind stirred the dust of the streets but in the harbour a breeze was playing across the water, and the fishermen sitting mending nets were talking of the unnatural stretch of weather breaking.

They put to sea on the noonday tide and as they left the shelter of the harbour dark clouds could already be seen massing on the horizon, blue black bruises on the turquoise skin of the Caribbean sky. The first hint of the violence that was yet to come.

As the hours passed and land faded from view the seas grew restless, the swell growing and the wave caps becoming more frantic. Light faded and a strange twilight spread across the decks sending sailors hurrying to haul in canvas and tightened ropes, as the light failed still further the wind strengthened and the waves reared higher, the troughs and crests separated by steep walls of water that seemed to grow as they watched them. Evening became night quickly and the Captain ordered hatches battened and confined all passengers below until further notice.

In their cabin Will and Elizabeth stared at each other, each knowing the others thoughts; after such a long spell of unusual calm a storm could be more than usually vicious and these warm waters bred storms more unpredictable than many. They could imagine the scenes on deck only too well, the waves swamping decks and tattering canvas, ropes groaning beneath the lash of the wind, men soaked and exhausted in minutes as Calypso's fury exploded around them. Each saw the knowledge in the others eyes but said nothing, instead they laid down upon the bed and held each other as the ship was tossed liker a discarded bottle on the sea.

In the end it was Elizabeth that said what they were both thinking,  
"This is no ordinary storm Will, it is more like the maelstrom of that battle with Beckett." She turned and smiled as she ran her finger down the side of his face. " It may be that we will see the Dutchman one last time after all."  
He nodded, but found words of comfort all the same,  
"It is not that bad, not yet at least. This ship is larger than the Pearl and she has an experienced crew and a good captain. She will ride it out."  
"Perhaps she may. I don't fear Davy Jones, Will, not now. But I don't want to die here, in this cabin. I don't want death creeping up behind me. If we are going down I want to see the sea as it claims us."  
He nodded again and took her hand,  
"On deck then? Together as we did before."  
She said nothing, just nodded. Then she smiled, and smoothed a hand across her skirts  
"As before, without these."  
Will laughed and swung himself to his feet and across the heaving deck of the cabin to his chest.

***

On deck all was confusion, every surface was awash, every sail furled and every man soaked and grey with fatigue. One blast from the wind, one look at the size of the sea, told them both that they were lucky to be afloat. The helmsman was fighting a losing battle to hold a course and no seaman had time to chide two passengers for being where they should not be. The looks on the faces of the men around them told its' own story. No one thought it mattered for none of them thought to survive, why should it matter whether two travellers from England dies above decks or below, for they all were going to die.

Will stared at the shadow of the man at the helm , still upright and apparently calm despite the battle with the roaring seas, and wondered why he was suddenly reminded of Jack.

All around was blackness, sun and stars just a distant memory. There was no horizon now just the towering mountains of waves, the troughs between them so shadowed that they could have been the valley of death itself. The ship bucked and tossed like a soul in torment yet it seemed that her structure held sound, there seemed to be no breaches in the hull and the masts were still, miraculously intact. But Will looked around him and knew that this was past the point where a captain's skill could save them, they were truly at the mercy of the sea, The look in Elizabeth's eyes told him that she knew it too, yet there was something else there too, something that almost looked to be relief.

Will himself felt only desperation; and a sense of impending loss that seemed to choke the beat of heart in his chest and close his throat. As lightening suddenly ripped the sky open he thought he heard the curses of Calypso and he found himself remembering that maelstrom again and the feel of the Dutchman below him as he died; he had never thought to feel that again. No, he had thought that his second death would be in his bed with his children around him. He looked across at Elizabeth, drinking in the sight of her with her face set and her hair tumbled about her, dripping and darkened as it had been as they exchanged their vows and wondered whether she had wished that for herself, or whether this was what she would always have chosen.

He struggled across the deck towards catching her wrists in his hands to steady them both, she stared back at him with eyes as dark as they had been that day, and yet not half so fearful. Then he saw her eyes widen and he turned to look back to the sea.

Off to the port side the sea seemed still blacker than before, as if a shadow from hell was reaching out towards them. Then a flash of lightening lit the crest of a wave larger than the rest, a monster amongst giants, and threw another ship into shadow against the sky. The familiar outline sent a jolt of something he couldn't identify through him and he tightened his hold on Elizabeth with something close to despair. Her fingers gripped his in as the lightening flashed again, both so fixed on the shadow of the ship on the hell wave's crest that they didn't see the wall of water coming from the starboard side.

The force of it knocked the breath from their bodies and the sound of it covered their screams as it tumbled them over the rail and into the sea.

***

The sea. Will knew it so well, and yet he did not know it at all. On the Dutchman he had known no fear of it, before that he had known too little to understand its power. But now as he fell into the swirl of black waters, tossed and rolled like a grain of sand, he knew it for what it was, a thing alive, a thing beyond the words of humans, a force of creation and a reclaimer. It was foolish to call the sea cruel or treacherous for it was nothing so small, it was beyond that and so not subject to the simple rules of man. It was itself and that was all it needed to be, was all it was ever meant to be.

Struggling to open his eyes against the force of the water he tried to find Elizabeth but darkness was everywhere, he reached out blindly but his fingers met only the chill of the depths. He was sinking, the current raging above him, forcing him down to even greater darkness. There was no cold now, a flash of fire flared in his lungs and then died, sound retreated, no wind, no hiss of moving water, just the beat of his heart racing ever faster as the water pulled him down. Memories pressed in on him, things remembered and half remembered, a life and more than a life blooming like a flower as his eyes darkened. He heard the beat of his heart grow faster as the shadow appear though the gloom, then it fell silent and even the shadow faded.

Hands reached for him as he drifted downwards but he did not see them.

***

Elizabeth felt the cold slam of the waters, the breath driven from her body in one long rush. She knew that she was lost.

Will had slipped from her hands and was gone from her sight and now she was alone with the sea. The weight of it was pressing down on her, pushing her further from the surface and any chance of survival. The sounds and sights of the storm were lost, not even the shadow of the ship above her showed in the darkness. She wondered where Will had gone and if Jones knew who it was he would soon pull onto his deck. Somehow it didn't matter anymore.

The texture of the darkness changed and the shadow of a woman appeared before her, she knew it even before she heard the voice,  
"Captain Swann, so ya come ta join me after aall."  
Then there were hands about her waist, pulling her away from the shadow and the voice and up towards the surface. But the darkness was still deepening and, as she felt the pressure of the water ease, it claimed her completely.

***

Will awoke with a cough, rolling onto his side to spew the water from his throat and lungs in a single shuddering heave. His eyes widened as he saw the wet and bedraggled form of Elizabeth lying beside him on the blackened deck, her eyes were closed but the rise and fall of her chest told him that she was still alive. The joy of seeing her safe, if not well, was followed by a sense of sorrow and a feeling of inevitability. He let his eyes drift up towards the sky, still dark with storm cloud, yet no darker than the rolled canvas he could see in the flare of the lightening. He was not surprised, he knew where he was and somehow he had been expecting it. With a sigh he pushed himself up, feeling a hand, warm and strong, come down upon his shoulder.  
"Easy Will, no need for you to be agettin yourself mithered. Miss Elizabeth, Mrs Turner I should say, is safe enough as ye can see."  
The voice came back to him across the years and he smiled,  
"Mr Gibbs. Was it you that pulled me out?"  
"Nay lad, I'm one for staying dry when I can and these seas are a mite playful for me."  
Will cast his eye out over the rail, the seas beyond them were no less mountainous than before but on the Pearl's deck all was still and calm. It seemed that he would learn the secret of the ship of the night after all, 'unless' a little voice whispered, 'you knew it all along'.  
"Who did then?" he asked  
"William, who do you think did? Seems I spend a lot of my time pulling you from one scrape or another."  
The voice was unmistakable and as it faded away the flower of memory bloomed again and he groaned,  
"Jack!"  
"Who else?"

He looked up into dark eyes and a familiar face, the dripping braids and the soaking scarf giving truth to the claimed rescue. Jack, the same as he ever had been, but now not so unexpected. Will turned to stare at the weary face of Elizabeth before turning a look of trepidation on the pirate standing so casually before him. But the look on Jack's face was not casual, there was knowing in his eyes, and something else, sorrow maybe, and something as close as you got to open apology from Jack Sparrow. A hand was extended down to grip his own.  
"It's finished Will. The game is played out. Elizabeth is dying."  
Jack's voice was as gentle as he had ever heard it.  
He cast one long lingering look at his wife before he allowed himself to be hauled to his feet.  
"I know."


	9. Chapter 9

**Ship of the night - 9**

Tia Dalma stood on the deck, almost nose to nose with Jack and with anger etched in every line of her.  
"She waas a Pirate Lord, so she is mine. She owe me Jack Sparrow, ya know tat to be true."  
Each word was emphasised by her jabbing his bared, and very wet, breast with a long and sharp fingernail.  
Jack just grinned at her, and fluttered his hands in denial,  
"You can't have her luv. You know how this works, I got her first and so for the moment she's mine." He looked very pleased with himself.  
She pouted and dropped her hand, looking up at him from under long lashes,  
"Tat be true," she admitted grudgingly.  
She shot Elizabeth a calculating look across the deck, sighing as she saw Will frown and grip his wife's hand tighter. Then, in an instant, her mood had changed and she turned back to Jack where he perched on the rail, apparently oblivious to the water dripping from his hair and clothes; she smiled and raised her finger again, but now her eyes were bright with laughter and her voice was caressing  
"But I demand payment."

Jack laughed and reached out to stroke her face with one finger, his eyes alight with something close to affectionate glee,  
"Can't demand payment of me any longer darlin, you know that."  
Tia Dalma bared her teeth at him, letting her tongue flick her lips,  
"Tat alsa be true. But a goodwill payment could be offered couldn't it ?" she purred  
Jack laughed louder at that, and trailed his finger down her throat,  
"That it could. But not at the moment."  
She caught his wandering hand and looked up at him wide eyed in a manner that made Elizabeth feel strangely uncomfortable,  
"What ten be ya proposing?" she purred.  
"That we lay the matter before the lady in question and let her make her choice. It will not be an easy one, so why should you want more than that?"

"She owe me, Jack." The frown was back.  
Jack pushed himself away from the rail and stared down into Tia Dalma's face, his smile fading and his voice becoming serious,  
"She was never a Pirate Lord, Tia luv, and you know it. Just a grief stricken, angry girl, riddled with guilt, though I agree she was one who had been well taught with a sword." He flicked a single look towards where Will and Elizabeth stood, then stared back down at the sea goddess, "It was Jones who betrayed you, and he paid for it."  
He raised his eyes to look beyond the ship and his voice was soft and musing,  
"There are no pirates anymore, not real ones."  
One long fingered hand fluttered with an apparently aimless elegance towards the angry seas,  
"thieves and scallywags and murderers aplenty to be sure, but no pirates. Not now, their world has faded and they have gone with it." He gave a small, almost wistful smile,"Nary a one any more."  
He looked back at Tia Dalma with soft, sad eyes,  
"The Pirate Lords are passed into history, let it lie luv, there's no more profit in it for anyone. Isn't this choice grief enough?"  
Will held his breath as he watched them and hoped that Jack would, once again, work his magic and sway the goddess as he had all those years before.

"What choice?"  
Elizabeth's voice cut across his thoughts,  
"Hush love," he implored and gripped her hand tighter.  
"I will not hush!" she shook his hand off and moved toward Jack and Calypso. "I will not be spoken about as if I were not here, or as if I am some sick child whose future must be decided by those more informed. What choice is it that I have to make Jack? What is it to you anyway?"  
Her angry frown faded to confusion as she realised who it was she that was speaking to.  
"It is you isn't? Neither son nor impostor. You."  
A wary look flitted across Jack's face and he exchanged a shuttered glance with the goddess beside him before looking back to Elizabeth with feigned outrage,  
"Son!" he squeaked, "Heavens forbid luv! Whatever made you think that!"  
"Well you are something, for neither you nor your crew look a day older than when I last saw them." She cast a wary look at Gibbs, "in fact in some cases they look younger than I recall."  
"Memory plays strange tricks Elizabeth."  
"It does but not forty years strange! It is you Jack, and Mr Gibbs too, yet it can't be."  
"It's him Elizabeth." Will's voice was weary,"trust me on that."

She turned back to Will,  
"But how?"  
"Jack found what he was looking for, but it wasn't quite what he thought it."  
"Is anything what we think it ? " Jack's voice was airy, "is this? Is now? But no matter. We are straying from the point." He crossed to stand between them and stabbed the air with a long forefinger, "And that point is what Elizabeth plans to do." His hands fluttered, "about now...... this... the situation. How things are."  
"And how are things Jack?"  
Jack turned slowly, hands spread, looking at her with his head tilted,  
"Not quite what you were thinking they were."

***

"You played dice! For our future, with our lives? Dice! How dare you!"  
"Well it wasn't exactly dice Elizabeth." Jack half protested.  
Elizabeth swept on as if he hadn't spoken,  
"Calypso I can understand, I mean it is just the sort of thing a goddess might do to paltry humans."  
In the background Will winced and took a deep breath, but Elizabeth barely paused,  
"Just who do you think you are Jack Sparrow?"  
Jack just smiled lazily, and flicked a hand in her general direction,  
"As always luv, your last hope."  
Elizabeth seemed speechless at the effrontery of it, but only for a moment, then she was advancing on him hands on hips and murder in her eyes,  
"You flatter yourself as always. What are you to use us in such a manner? Some sort of god!"

Will closed his eyes and hoped that Jack didn't lose his temper, he had only seen that once before and he didn't want to see it again, certainly not if Calypso joined in the anger. But Jack just shrugged and grinned,  
"Well now you come to ask..."  
Elizabeth ignored him,  
"And just what exactly were the stakes of this game of sort of dice?"  
Jack's smile died and his expression lost any hint of amusement,  
"Your life with Will darlin. Your home, your family, your children, your memories. Quite a stake to play for, wouldn't you say, eh?"

Elizabeth stared at him in silence, all words swept away by the look on his face. Tia Dalma slid behind her and placed a hand on her shoulder, then she leaned forward and spoke softly,  
"Him cheat!"  
Jack gave a crack of laughter, and Elizabeth saw Gibbs nod ruefully; then Jack was strolling across the deck, braids swinging,  
"As expected luv. As expected." He advanced on Calypso again, finger raised, "now don't tell me you expected anything else for I'll not be believing you." he shrugged and cast a quick look at Will still silent by the rail, "Anyways you knew you would get him safely back so what was the harm?"  
Elizabeth saw the grief slip across Will's face and felt a hole open up inside of her,  
"Get who back? Jack? Who did she expect to get back?"  
Jack's face fell and his mouth tightened as if he bitten into a lemon,  
"Well luv, it's like this you see..."

"Enough!"  
Calypso's voice cut across Jack's and she stepped back, her expression sent Elizabeth back to Will's side in a rush, her fingers reaching for his. The sea goddess turned to face them, forbidding and regal,  
"Captain Turner, Mrs Turner," she nodded to them as if this were a social meeting and she their hostess, "tis time tat things be as they were. Tis time dis day end and ma ferryman be returned ta me. Mrs Turner, Jack be right, him reach ya first and ya are his by right of tat, you have ta protection of ta water of life, this time ta sea does nat claim you. You may go in peace if tat be waat ya wish. But the Dutchman needs her captain."

Elizabeth gripped Will's hand tighter as in a cascade of foam the prow of the Dutchman rose above the seas.

***

Jack and Gibbs had retreated to a distance and Calypso was stood at the other rail staring out past the Dutchman at who knew what. In as much as it was possible they were alone. Beyond the rail the storm still raged but its fury was no more awful than the truth.  
"Jack played for my days ashore Elizabeth, just as Jones crew once played for days of service." He smiled at her, "Who is to say what a day means? To Jack and Calypso a day can mean anything, and she is right of course, he cheated. But fair or foul he won me the right for my next day ashore to last your lifetime; it would cost me every such day for aeons to come but what do I care about that? I got a life with you, a family, children I saw grow and make their own way. I was with you when you needed me. That has always been all I wanted, it was more than enough."  
"But Jones returned to the Dutchman! You told me so Will!"  
"I believed it to be true. While I was with you I couldn't remember that the Dutchman was waiting anymore than I could remember the game or Jack. That was a part of the deal. I lived a normal life with you until your death."  
"But I'm not dead Will! We still have time! Calypso cannot take you yet, not if that wasn't the agreement, and somehow I think that Jack paid sufficient attention to the small print this time."  
Will took her hand and looked down at their entwined fingers,  
"But you should be. You are dying Elizabeth, you have been for two years now. But for Jack's intervention you would never have lived to see us return home."  
She frowned at him,  
"Dying? Me? I have wondered I confess, I have been so tired, but what has Jack to say to that?"

Suddenly Jack was behind her,  
"The water of life luv, as Tia mentioned. " He slid his arm around her shoulders, "You asked if I was a god but you didn't want to hear the answer, now did you? But you need to hear Elizabeth, you need to hear this.."  
She looked at him wide eyed, but was silent. Jack smiled wryly,  
"When I handed Will the Dutchman I was still determined I would not be returning to the locker and Sao Feng's chart offered an alternative. The fountain of youth, or so Hector and I had thought; the chance to stay alive, and young, forever. But as you so astutely pointed out a moment ago the devil is in the detail, and it was not the fountain of youth but the water of life that I found.."  
He stared at her with unusual solemnity,  
"Something altogether different luv. I'll spare you the details of how and where, but everything carries a price and it is enough to say that I am now the custodian of that water on the seas. I get no older, and I cannot die, I can sail the seas forever but not on all the seas and I cannot sail entirely on whim or desire. As William's job is to care for those whose time ends on the sea, so mine is watch over those at sea whose time is not supposed to come. As William ferries them to the other world, so I am charged with preventing them from straying there, or indeed anywhere but their appointed living realm, until the appropraite time. But," he raised an explanatory finger, "unlike William I am not chained to the sea, I can come and go as I please, and I can, or rather the water of life can, under certain circumstances hold back death from those who are near it, where ever they are."  
"And you did this for me?"  
"Yes luv, I did that for you. There were things you needed to resolve and I gave you time to do it."  
"My dreams, when I saw you, you were there?"  
"Aye, you might say that I was," he shrugged and then winked at her, "in one way or another."  
"And Calypso?"  
"If she noticed... well she looked the other way. William is a good ferryman and she knew what might be at stake." He looked suddenly crafty, "if someone else were to stab his heart who could say what kind of Captain the Dutchman might get? Another Jones perhaps."  
Will suppressed a smile, no doubt Jack had made plenty of play with that thought when bargaining with Calypso!

"Then you can let me live! Give me a few more years with Will. Is that so much to ask for Jack?"  
Jack captured her hands and held them between his own but he let his eyes drift across to Calypso,  
"It's beyond that now Elizabeth. I was stretching the rules when I prolonged your life, so I can't call foul if Tia stretched them with her storm now can I? Technically Will died in the sea, as you would have done if I had not reached you when I did. That game is over and now you have a choice, won't be easy but it's yours to make and no one will persuade you either way."  
Elizabeth stared at him for a moment then swallowed hard,  
"A choice?"  
"Yes."  
"Of what?"  
"Where you go from here," he tightened his grip on her hand, "but you can't go back to that ship you fell from, you can't go home to England. You can't go back to life Elizabeth, not now. Will must return to the Dutchman, the question for you is whether you go with him and whether you stay with him."

Elizabeth tried to shake of his grip,  
"Of course I go with him, I'll jump back into the sea if that's what it takes."  
"Caution Mrs Turner." Calypso's voice drifted across the decks, "tis not a decision to be made in haste, far once done it cannat be undone."  
Elizabeth looked towards Will,  
"What other choice is there?"  
It was Jack again who answered her,  
"You can die here on the deck of the Pearl, and if you wish it can be as if you had died in your bed in the inn. Or you can go with William to the Dutchman and have him ferry you to the other side, or you can go with William and stay on the Dutchman for one hundred years. Or..."  
"Or what?"  
"Or you can take the water of life and sail forever on the Pearl, meeting William whenever our combined duties allow." He shrugged, "Probably more than one day in ten year but who can say?"

Calypso saw Elizabeth's dawning smile as she looked towards Will and raised her hand, drawing her attention,  
"But there be a price ta pay remember that."  
Jack nodded,  
"Aye there is a price to pay. This ship and it's crew cannot travel to the seas and lands beyond death, nor can we set foot on the Dutchman. Once William has resumed his duties he will not be able to set foot on the Pearl, for we are life Elizabeth and he is death, and we can only meet on neutral ground. Take the waters of life and you are forever bound to the living and life; you could not follow your children or your parents into death, nor could you follow William if someone were to stab his heart. Not until life and death are one. "  
Tears welled in Elizabeth's eyes and Will stepped forward and took her hands from Jack's,  
"If you stay one hundred years on the Dutchman then we can be together, but your reunion with all that we love must be delayed, though eventually it will come. Yet when you go I must stay and we will be parted again until all things end."

'Tat be ya choice Elizabeth Swann , what then do ya decide?"  
Elizabeth looked from one to the other then across to the Dutchman now serenly sat beside the Pearl.

Memories streamed into her mind, burning away the years. In her mind's eye she saw her father journeying to meet her mother once more and Will that day of Beckett's death. Slowly she smiled.


	10. Chapter 10

**Ship of the night **

**Epilogue**

"Is a hundred years a long time would you say Jack?" Gibbs asked  
"Depends on what you're planning on doing with it mate." Jack was at the helm of the Black Pearl steering them out past the shoals of time,  
Gibbs nodded,  
"Don't seem as long as it used to seem though."  
Jack smiled,  
"Even given the lack of rum?"  
"Aye." Gibbs took a swig from his flask, "Though it be fair wonderful where you can find it if ye look hard enough."  
Jack's smile grew.  
"As you say mate, it is."

"Don't think Miss Elizabeth will think a hundred years long enough though." Gibbs said as he put the flask back into his pocket.  
"Maybe not. But then maybe she won't be having a hundred years. Maybe she and young William won't be needing them eh?"  
Gibbs squinted across at him,  
"What be in ye mind Captain?"  
Jack stared at the horizon,  
"Well there is still the matter of William's heart, is there not? Were someone to stab the beating thing then William would be freed from his shackles to the Dutchman and our star crossed, or rather goddess crossed, lovers could dance away into the herafter together."  
Gibbs thought about that for a moment, then shook his head sadly,  
"But whose going to stab it Jack? Not you, and Barbossa be otherwise occupied as you might say."

Jack had got that innocent look of his on his face, the one that so often meant trouble,  
"Depends on who finds it doesn't it?" he said softly.  
Gibbs frowned in confusion,  
"Could be anyone, Jack, not a good man, not even a sailor. Calypso would be powerful annoyed by that. T'was keeping Will from such a thought that persuaded her to let him have his life day in the end, even though you cheated. You said so yourself."  
"Aye, that I did, and it was. But having had the thought do you think she would leave it to chance?"  
Gibbs frowned at him but with dawning amusement,  
"Depends on who gave her the thought in the first place I be thinking."  
Jack smiled again,  
"And you might be right to say so mate."

At the rail Calypso appeared in a wave of spray. Jack gave a sideways look and his smile widened,  
"Always pays to be prepared. If the facts are unappealing, then change the facts."  
"The facts being?" Gibbs encouraged him.  
"Well you want the right sort of captain for the Dutchman do you not? A good man who loves the sea, and not one like to turn into Jones. One who has no...... competing interests you might say."  
"Such as?" Gibbs encouraged again.  
Jack paused for a moment his smile becoming reflective,  
"Would you say the Turners were good parents Gibbs? Raised their children in a manner like to make them good men, and women. Make them a good captain?"  
Gibbs looked confused but nodded,  
"Aye, I'd say so."  
"Well, so would I. Raised a boy they have, fine lad and it's a powerful love of the sea that he has."  
"As him should!" purred Calypso coming closer,  
"Aye as you say. Sea's all he wants and needs. He'll make a fine captain one day." Jack looked towards Calypso with a grin, "wouldn't you agree."  
"Tat I would." she grinned back.  
Jack looked back towards Gibbs all innocent and earnest,  
"And if he were to find this heart, this dead heart, beating, might he not be fired with the idea to put an end to the weirdness, and the sadness, of it and stab it?"  
Gibbs looked at him with horrified fascination, but he nodded,  
"Put it out of its misery you might say. Aye that he might, if he were a good lad and the idea were to come to him."

Jack was smiling that smile again, the one that told Gibbs that he was never going to guess what Jack was planning now. Gibbs looked from him to Calypso and back, then he spread his hands, not sure that he wanted to know more but curious all the same,  
"And this lad of theirn, the one who might find the heart and have the idea to stab it, what might his name be?"  
Jack and Calypso exchanged a knowing smile before she melted back into the sea, but her laughter was still ringing in the wind as Jack replied,  
"Jonathon," his smile became wider but his eyes stayed fixed on the horizon, "Jon, but never Jack."


End file.
